After years of watching lychee prices fall because of dependence on Chinese traders, teacher Bạch Kim Ngân experimented on her own and successfully fermented lychee vinegar.
Ms. Kim Ngân, 4th from the left
Bạch Kim Ngân, born in 1972, is a chemistry teacher at Chũ Town Lower Secondary School in Lục Ngạn, Bắc Giang. Although she was not born in this lychee-growing region, her many years there have given her a deep understanding of growers' hardships as lychee prices repeatedly collapse because of dependence on Chinese traders.
‘In quite a few years, lychees were even thrown away. At those times, I always thought that something had to be done to make use of this readily available resource. We may not yet be able to sell large quantities, but at least the specialty produce of the growing region should not go to waste,’ she recounted.
Outside her teaching hours, Ms. Ngân began learning about by-products extracted from fruit, taking particular interest in fermenting vinegar from fresh fruit. According to her, the market currently offers many types of vinegar, but industrial production leaves products with insufficient nutrients and high acidity, not to mention unregulated products mixed with additives harmful to health. Naturally fermented vinegar is rich in nutrients, but its price is rather high.
In 2013, as the lychee harvest began, teacher Ngân bought several baskets, peeled and crushed the fruit herself and tried steeping it. After a while, the liquid fermented and developed a delicious aroma and taste. Besides using some in family meals, she gave the rest to relatives and friends and received fairly positive feedback. Still not entirely confident in the process or product quality, she decided to have a vinegar sample tested, and the results met the standards.
In 6/2014, she hired 30 workers to peel around 30 tonnes of lychees. After 6 months of fermentation, the first large batch of vinegar succeeded. At that point, however, she still had no plan to invest in a workshop because she did not know how to find a market for the product.
“When I hired workers, I simply thought that once they completed the required output, I would pay them and no longer employ them. But many earnestly wanted to keep working and said they wanted to see lychee vinegar become more widely available. They made me reconsider,” Ms. Ngân confided.
In addition to her savings, she borrowed a total of around 1.5 billion dong to build a workshop, purchase raw materials and containers, and print packaging and labels. However, few facilities in the country produce natural vinegar, and she was the first to use lychees as the raw material, making it difficult to find pasteurization machinery and equipment.
To gain control over production, Ngân commissioned machinery suited to her process. Because the lychee season is short and supplies difficult to secure, she hires many workers during peak season to peel and stock enough ingredients for a full year's production. This raises production costs somewhat.
However, she said the greatest difficulty remained the market. As a teacher, Ngân had no marketing or management knowledge. Initially, with too few staff, many colleagues used their summer holidays to help her take products to local markets and grocery stores to sell or leave on consignment.
Because vinegar was regarded only as a condiment and people were not accustomed to drinking fruit vinegar as a refreshing beverage, many were skeptical when the product was marketed. “Even when we managed to sell it, they bought only very small quantities, so developing the market was an exhausting stage for me,” the female director said.
Through acquaintances and referrals, the lychee vinegar soon spread beyond Bắc Giang to neighboring areas, including Hanoi. “Customers gave positive feedback. Some dealers at Đồng Xuân Market ordered dozens of cases. At the time, that was pure happiness for me,” Ngân shared.
Besides lychees, she experimented with fermenting other fruits, including mangoes, grapes and apples, but had the most success with green apples from Lục Ngạn. In early 2015, the facility officially launched apple vinegar as an additional product.
After 2 years in business, Ngân’s workshop now covers more than 1,000 m2 and produces an average of 10,000–15,000 liters of vinegar per month. Its products are available in almost every locality nationwide through official distributors, including dealers and supermarkets. They are also exported to several countries through small-scale cross-border trade.
‘I recently sent a shipment to Australia and the Philippines, both as gifts and as product samples to find partners in those markets,’ she said.
Sharing her upcoming plans, Ngân said she would continue improving production to create premium products bottled in glass. She would also prepare the necessary conditions for exports to overseas markets this year.
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