VietNamNet Bridge – A new poultry egg brand has appeared on the market for the last two months - Vietfarm. The most special characteristic of the brand is that the producer uses paper boxes, not plastic boxes, to put eggs.

Dam Van Hoat, General Director of Vietfarm, said that he cannot see any other countries, except Vietnam, where producers put eggs in plastic boxes. In the countries, consumers would be ready to pay higher for the green products. Therefore, Hoat decided to hold eggs in paper boxes.

However, the problem that there were no enterprise which provided paper boxes. They only made paper boxes to orders, and at very high prices. Therefore, Vietfarm decided to import paper boxes from Malaysia. Of course, the imported paper boxes were more expensive than domestic plastic boxes. In order to have a paper box for 10 eggs, Hoat had to pay 1400 dong for a paper box, while it cost 760 dong only for a plastic box.

However, as Vietfarm wanted consumers to get familiar to the paper boxes as a good way to protect the environment, it still accepted the high cost.

It is estimated that 4 million eggs are consumed in HCM City every day, and 2/3 of the volume of products are put in plastic boxes. This means that every day, people discharge to the environment a big amount of plastic boxes. Only a small percentage of the boxes can be collected by scrap iron dealers for recycling, while the remaining causes serious pollution to the environment.

Meanwhile, if using paper boxes, it would be not only very easy to carry boxes to different places, but also to discard, which does not do harm to the environment.

Hoat has also found out that since the materials are getting more and more expensive, plastic box manufacturers have to make thinner boxes in order to cut down the production costs. As the boxes get thinner, their thermal insulation capability is worse. As it is always very hot in the south, the low thermal insulation would make eggs spoiled easily.

Therefore, though it is most costly to use paper boxes, the economic efficiency would be higher thanks to the lower percentage of spoiled eggs.

After a short period of using paper boxes, Vietfarm has got the support from clients. However, Hoat of Vietfarm wants more than that. As the company has to use paper boxes, the profit the company can make is relatively low, just 20-30 dong per egg. Therefore, Hoat thought that his company needs to make paper boxes itself.

Hoat decided to import a production line for making paper boxes. “I spent a couple of weeks to learn about the scrap paper market and I came to a conclusion that the material is cheap enough for me to try,” he said.

Finally, the company imported two production lines, valued at 400,000 dollars, for making paper boxes with the capacity of 4000-6000 boxes per hour. The main material used to produce cardboards is scrap paper, carton paper or cassava peel, eucalyptus bark, available on the market.

Green products still can be cheap

It is estimated that some enterprises in HCM City are using 150,000 plastic boxes a day to put 1.5-2 million eggs. With the price of 750 dong per box, they would have to pay 150 million dong per day, 4.5 billion dong and 54 billion dong a year.

Meanwhile, if enterprises can make paper boxes themselves, the total cost would decrease by 2/3. This means that every year, the market could save tens of billions of dong, while this does not influence the environment.

Source: SGTT