Vietnamese-made rice noodles favored in EU, Japan: exporters   Bich Chi Co employees are pictured at the company's packaging line in Dong Thap Province, located in southern Vietnam.Tuoi Tre When Pham Thanh Binh says his company’s pretax profit last year was even bigger than its charter capital, he is not joking at all. The chief executive of Bich Chi JSC, a food producer and exporter based in the southern Vietnamese province of Dong Thap, said most of the incredible business results are from exporting products made from rice. More than 60 percent of the company’s 20,000 tons of products were exported in 2014, raking in pretax earnings worth VND50 billion (US$2.33 million), Binh said. Bich Chi makes 160 different types of products in four categories: noodles, rice paper, nutrition powder, and prawn crackers, and exports them to the EU, the US, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN countries. “Even though Bich Chi has been shipping its pho [Vietnamese noodle] to Japan for 12 years, I never cease feeling happy whenever I see our products used by Japanese pho restaurants,” Binh said, adding Japanese consumers are very fond of the iconic Vietnamese dish. “There are 120 pho restaurant in Paris that use Vietnamese noodle,” he added. Sa Giang Co, another food exporter in Dong Thap, last week began exporting their first batches of noodles to Japan under a large order it signed with the leading AEON supermarket chain there. The Japanese side sent two experts to examine the company’s facilities two weeks before officially closing the contract, after seeing that Sa Giang meets all required standards. “AEON has a huge demand for the product and their requirements are also very strict,” deputy director Mat Bich Khuay said, adding that the importer is willing to pay good prices for the products. Exporting products made from rice yields far bigger profit than selling the grain itself, according to the Bich Chi boss. “Rice can be exported at an average of VND10,000 a kg, whereas ourpho noodles are sold at $2, or VND44,000, a kg,” he elaborated. Bich Chi and Sa Giang thus do not hesitate to pump money into research and develop for new products as well as employing modern technology to expand production as their products are favored by consumers in many high demand markets. Both of the companies are located in Sa Dec, home to a craft village that has a history of more than 100 years of making rice flour-related products. The village consumes up to 36,000 tons of rice a year to make rice flour that will be used by companies like Bich Chi and Sa Giang to make noodles. “The strong growth of the rice product exports also benefits the powder-making villagers,” said Nguyen Quoc Chanh, deputy head of the city’s economic bureau. “The Sa Dec administration is investing in the village so that they can adapt modern and automated technology to enhance production and increase the quality of their flours.” TUOI TRE NEWS