Now we would like to discuss a bit about Tan An Food Processing Limited (Tanimex-LA). Please tell us about your company.

I founded Tanimex-LA on 15 Jan 1998. It’s a family business of 4 members. According to the registration, it operates in agricultural products import and export industry and we mainly do cashew. Tanimex-LA generates around 1,000 billion VND revenue, among the top 20 of 500 Vietnam enterprises doing cashew. Tanimex-LA is recognised as a prestigious exporter by Vietnam Department of Commerce for 10 consecutive years.

It would be a mistake if we talk about Tanimex-LA without mentioning CasNa. Please tell us about this brand, any challenges, adversities when the it was formed?

CasNa is the premium fresh cashew brand of Tanimex-LA for Vietnam local market. Fresh cashew from CasNa always bring health-benefits to consumers. We use environmentally friendly technologies to produce this line. CasNa is our dedication, our pride. Same as other brands from Tanimex-LA, CasNa commits to meet our core principles, “5 No” and “3 Do”.

• No preservatives, artificial colours or flavours.
• No mouldy or go-off products.
• No insects or microbe in products.
• No blood labours.
• No genetically modified products.

• Do provide high nutritional values.
• Do have natural color.
• Do possess unique taste.

Recently if you follow Tanimex-LA Facebook or website, you probably have read a series of how the brand originated. My staff has written it pretty throughout so I won’t repeat to save your time. If we talk about adversities or challenges, it may be like this. Actually, doing fresh cashews in Vietnam is not that difficult. But it is easy said than done, many problems occurred. For instance: input quality management, hygienic processing and operation planning, environment friendly, corporate social responsibility, etc. If we seriously put them into account, expenses will jump up, leading products to be less competitive with others within the range. In addition, I must get approval from other members of the board. It was hard to convince them. But I know that sooner or later, processors must follow the rules of markets.

CasNa is my brainchild. I usually tell my colleagues: “Maybe we must keep our products’ quality and our brand’s prestige, not the quantity that we sell out. No matter how challenging it is, we must follow this path”.