A Cascara tea production line at the plant. — VNA/VNS Photo

A plant processing Cascara tea from coffee husks opened in the northern mountainous province of Sơn La on Monday, the first one in the locality.  

Financed by Phúc Sinh Sơn La JSC, a member of Phúc Sinh Co, the plant has a designed production capacity of one tonne of finished tea each day. The Cascara tea products will be sold in the domestic market and exported. 

Nguyễn Thành Công, Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, said Sơn La wished to introduce its Cascara tea products to businesses and consumers at home and abroad, to encourage firms to invest in processing plants to improve product value, promoting the consumption and export of the province's agricultural products. 

Previously, almost 100 per cent of coffee husks were composted as fertiliser, burned or thrown away. Large coffee-growing areas face a lot of pollution problems from waste coffee husks, said Vũ Việt Thắng, General Director of Phúc Sinh Co. 

The Cascara tea production line utilising the Wash Arabica processing technique produces a special tea product with significant nutritional and economic value, he said. 

He said that Cascara tea has been used by South American countries for about 50 years and the US has been selling it domestically for a long time, but the product was still very new in Việt Nam.

He added that Phúc Sinh was the first company to produce this Cascara tea product on a large scale. The company's products have been shipped to overseas markets such as Italy, France and other European countries.

Phúc Sinh Co is a reputable pepper and coffee exporter on the world market. Currently, the firm has six agricultural product processing plants in Bình Dương, Đắk Lắk and Sơn La provinces. — VNS