Local entrepreneurs are taking advantage of growing health-consciousness at home and abroad by producing health cookings with Vietnamese materials.

After drawing the conclusions, he quit his job and founded Vietnam Plant Oil and Food Processing (Vnpofood Co., Ltd.) in 2001. He borrowed and invested VND2 billion (US$110,000) in building a factory that could extract the fruit’s oils and transform them into health products and traditional medicines.

Soon he was exporting large orders of tablets made from the oil to the US and Germany.

Suat said he exported about 15-16 million tablets last year to earn about VND10 billion ($560,000), accounting for 40 percent of the company’s annual revenue.

Now, he said he wants to expand his business and set up a factory in the US, where the demand for such products is growing.

“We are considering regulations for production in the US, which has the world’s strictest food legal system,” Suat said. He hopes to have his US-based business opened in 1-2 years time.

Health-conscious

Le Ngoc Lieu started her health food product business after a successful career in the fashion industry. She said she first had the idea when trai nhau, a fruit known as noni (Morinda citrifolia), helped her husband in his fight against liver disease.

Her Ho Chi Minh City-based company, Huong Thanh, began making a range of products from the fruit of the small evergreen to supply to domestic and export markets in 2000.

The company manufactures drinks, liquor, powder and soap from noni, all of which help those afflicted by common colds, cancer, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, pain, skin infections, and depression.

Consumers, especially in developed countries, were paying more attention to their health these days, said Lieu. The preference for healthy products could open a world of opportunities for Vietnam, she said.

The company exports 60 percent of its products to Japan, Korea, Australia, Myanmar and Latin American, according to Lieu.

Lieu said educated or wealthy Vietnamese consumers were also paying more attention to the health implications of their purchases, rather than just the prices.

Growing market

Local food producer Kim Bac Company plans to open its Organic Nutrition Center in HCMC’s District 1 next month. The VND4 billion ($220,000) center will sell both local and foreign health food products while also providing customers with nutrition advice.

The center’s director, Nguyen Huu Toan, said it was obvious that more consumers in Vietnam were opting for healthier products.

Toan said the company plans to open three centers in the city this year and more in other cities and provinces in the future.

Interest from abroad

Ming Chang Vu, a professor at Taiwan’s National Pingtung University, said Vietnam’s natural abundance of herbal materials had drawn the interest of health food producers from Taiwan.

Vu said a group of Taiwanese firms that import raw health food materials from Vietnam, including industry leader Jojia, recently visited the country looking for local partners in the industry.

Health food products generate $3 billion in annual revenues in the territory, but the business is only in its infancy in Vietnam, he said.

Reported by Minh Quang