About 360 enterprises from 35 countries and territories showcased their products at 2,000 pavilions at the fair, for the benefit of about 100,000 visitors. — VNA/VNS Photo Vu Toan/Pham Duy

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Vietnamese enterprises participated in a coffee fair in Seoul to seek business opportunities and partners in the global market, the trade office of Viet Nam in South Korea said.

The office said the 15th international coffee fair, entitled Cafe Show 2015, in Seoul, South Korea, had advertising and trade promotion programmes, seminars and cultural exchanges. The fair ended on November 15.

It was the largest annual fair of South Korea's coffee industry to introduce coffee drinking and coffee products, as well as the equipment for processing, preserving, packing and making coffee products. The fair also brought business opportunities for international suppliers, producers, processors and distributors of coffee.

About 360 enterprises from 35 countries and territories showcased their products at 2,000 pavilions at the fair, for the benefit of about 100,000 visitors.

The Viet Nam Trade Office and local coffee enterprises participated in the fair to introduce Viet Nam's coffee industry to visitors, and to seek opportunities for co-operation, investment, production and distribution between Vietnamese enterprises and South Korean enterprises as well as firms from other countries, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

Ngo Xuan Ty, a representative of Viet Nam's Trade Office in South Korea, said South Korea was a potential market for Vietnamese coffee exports, with a total consumption of coffee valued at US$4 billion in 2012, the 11th largest consumer of coffee in the world.

Viet Nam was the largest supplier of coffee to South Korea, with a total export volume of 32,000 tonnes, worth $70 million, in 2014, the trade office said. However, the South Korean people do not know much about Vietnamese coffee brands because a majority of Vietnamese coffee is used for making coffee products in South Korea.

Therefore, Vietnamese coffee enterprises took part in the coffee fair this year to showcase key products and brands to foreign customers, including South Koreans.

Luong The Hung, chairman and general director of Me Trang Coffee Joint Stock Company, said the company received good feedback on its coffee products from visitors, and met many South Korean partners who sought to do business with the company.

To enter the South Korean market, Hung said local coffee companies needed a national policy on advertising Vietnamese coffee and that they should co-operate among themselves to build a brand for Vietnamese coffee products.

Me Trang would co-operate with South Korean partners to take advantage of the taste for and culture of coffee consumption as well as distribution and business systems, he said.

Leberica is a new Vietnamese coffee brand, which the company has created as one that is different from the products of other companies, as they are manually handled by farmers at all stages of sorting and roasting of coffee beans to ensure the purest coffee taste, Han Bao

Quyen, product management director of Leberica, said.Park Jeong Kwan, a representative of a coffee importer in South Korea, said he liked Vietnamese coffee and studied Vietnamese coffee imports because they were delicious and tasty. — VNS