Hiep Thanh Company
HTC is a leading agricultural trading and producing group in Viet Nam for tea, spices, and herbs. Its tea branch is one of the five or six tea companies with organic certification and three companies with Fair Trade certification in Viet Nam. It is among the biggest highland, organic and fair-trade tea producers in Viet Nam.
Different to tea production in other countries, where the poor are engaged as low paid laborers, the company emphasizes an outgrower model where the B40 are engaged as suppliers earning higher than as workers in traditional tea estates. The companies provides those tea growers, who otherwise have very low income (many of them used to exchange tea for rice or sell it at very low price), with stable income opportunities above the market rates.
The company works directly with about 8,000 households or 16,000-21,000 persons (on average 2-3 persons per household are engaged in tea production). Most of these households are poor, vulnerable and ethnic minorities groups and 80 per cent of the people reached are women. In addition, the company has about 400 full time workers. Farmers working with HTC can earn 7 million VND per month on average (or $10 a day). The company pays about 20 per cent more than the other conventional tea producers and pays higher than most other organic tea companies. The company is guaranteeing the purchase of the tea products from the farmers at prices higher than the market price. The company can pay higher prices due to its higher value-addition and the international demand for high-quality, organic produce. As a result, the tea has become a “cash crop” that provides stable income for the poor farmers.