Launching Excellence Model on Harvesting, Packing House Operations and Storage of Vegetables

Hanoi stops suddenly on its North Eastern where multi-green vegetable gardens spread outwards as far as the eye can see. The Excellence Model has been developed in An Viet Hi-Tech Agro-product Joint Stock Company, just 30 minutes drive from the edge of Hanoi city and in the middle of these gardens. Set up in 2012 by Mr. Nguyen Huu Dao, the company owns 5ha of leafy vegetables and linkages with other 1,000 small scale farmers with a total area of 100 ha. It has been a success story and now supplies a range of packed vegetables to supermarkets and shops in Hanoi such as Intimex, Co-opmart, V+, etc.

The Model has a daily capacity of 1,000 kg of fresh vegetables, and including tools for harvesting, preliminary washing and ozonized bubbling washing equipment, built-in solar energy cooling pads for vegetable temporary store, devices for packing house operations, 3-store-cold system with built-in airocide to expel undesired gases in working sites and in the stores, and other needed fittings.

Mr. Nguyen Huu Dao, Director of the Company said: “The Excellence Model has improved extremely the production of Company and farmers. The advanced post-harvest technology has contributed to maintaining quality, reducing losses, and increasing product value in vegetable chain. It also improved working conditions for farmers. The post-harvest losses of root and fruit-vegetables have reduced from 25%-40% to 5-15% and  selling prices have increased by 10-30%; post-harvest losses of leafy vegetables are  reduced to 7-15% at the moment,  while selling prices rise 10-50% for the counter-seasonal products”.  

Mr. Karl Schebesta, UNIDO Project Manager remarked: “Reducing post-harvest losses was one of the main goals of the interventions. The figures reached in this Excellence Model are convincing that the model developed could be replicated in other areas of the country but also adapted to other sectors”.  

Thanks to the strong commitment from participating stakeholders, the project also lead to improved quality  and increased prices  benefitting on the one side the consumers  and on the other side the many farmers who are connected to this centre. He added “Consumers, supermarkets and export markets are demanding ever higher standards for food quality, food safety and nutrient content. The model developed in the framework of the project proves that it is the correct answer. Application of appropriate harvest and post-harvest techniques along the value chain is imperative to improve supply and quality of vegetables available on the Hanoi market. The Excellence Model at the modern standards could easily expanded to other localities in the country for skills development and wide replication”.

Contact for more infomation: 

Mr. Karl Schebesta, UNIDO Program Manager

Email: k.schebesta@unido.org

Ms. Hoang Mai Van Anh, Program Officer

Email: v.hoang-mai@unido.org