Green tea flooding bottled drink market.

At a Ho Chi Minh City’s Maximark supermarket, a middle-aged housewife rushes to swipe all the bottles of sweetened green tea from the shelf. “Green tea is my family’s favorite drink these days,” she says, adding that she often has to buy extra on the weekend. Green tea has been drunk in copious amounts by Vietnamese families at home and in restaurants for centuries. A recent boom in bottled green tea, made both locally and abroad, means that the traditional beverage is now competing with big names like Pepsi Cola and even bottled water. Nga, a convenience shop owner in a District 5 alley off An Duong Vuong Street, says she started selling bottled green tea – which is often sweetened with honey or sugar – when she noticed the beverages were selling like hotcakes at other local shops. She says she sells two or three 12-bottle cartons a day while her sales of purified water and other soft drinks are declining.

Citimart supermarket director Nguyen Thi Anh Hoa says Vietnamese customers believe green tea is good for their health and are willing to spend the extra VND1,000-2,000 (6-12 US cents) to enjoy the beverage over purified water or other soft drinks. “Our customers buy so much green tea that our supermarket often runs out of it,” says Hoa. She says that green tea has become so popular that she must now fend off uninvited solicitors marketing non-beverage products such as green tea milk and green tea cakes.

Maximark managing director Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao says bottled green tea sales have grown a rapid 30-40 percent over the last year. She says some of the most popular brands have doubled their sales in the last 12 months, adding that each market in his chain sells about 500 cartons of green tea bottles a day on average.

Ralf Matthaes, managing director of market research company TNS Vietnam, says that though consumer confidence has faltered on high inflation, the price hikes have not affected the sale of bottled green tea. A TNS Vietnam survey released last month listed the green tea as one of the five fastest growing domestic markets between June 2007 and June 2008.

Tan Hiep Phat Group became the first company to sell bottled green tea on the local market in early 2006. It invested US$20 million in production equipment from Canada to launch the popular 0 Degree brand. Tran Qui Thanh, chairman of the group which gained initial success with its popular Number 1 energy drink, says its factory in Binh Duong Province has nearly reached its capacity of 12,000 bottles per hour and the group is calling for more capital from other investors to expand the factory.

URC Vietnam, an affiliate of the Filipino-based Universal Robuna Corporation, spent some $14.5 million launching its more successful brand of bottled green tea, C2, the most popular ready-to-drink green tea beverage for sale in Vietnam. The URC Vietnam factory in Binh Duong Province’s Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park is stretched to its capacity and has to import the product from its parent company to meet local demand.

Vu Quoc Tuan, public relations manager at PepsiCo International Vietnam, says the bottled green tea market has grown 300 percent over the last year. “No drink has grown like that,” he says. PespiCo has reached an agreement with Unilever Vietnam allowing the soft drink giant to produce Unilever’s Lipton Pure Green, made at a factory in Ho Chi Minh City. Tuan said the cola giant will start its second factory in Vietnam late this year to expand its production of bottled green tea. (VNB 3 September 2008)