Phuc Sinh Consumer Products Joint Stock Company yesterday officially launched cascara tea bags made from Son La Arabica coffee beans. Not only does it produce the delicious Specialty Blue Son La coffee famous for the Northwest, but Arabica can also be used to make premium cascara tea.
Mr. Phan Minh Thong, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Phuc Sinh Company, said that cascara tea is a unique product made from coffee cherries of Son La Arabica coffee fruit. This type of tea has been popular and used in South America for more than 50 years and is loved by many foreign consumers. The tea has been sold domestically in the US for a long time, but it is a new kind of tea in Vietnam. Phuc Sinh Company purchased a manufacturing line from Colombia to make this cascara tea product on a large industrial scale – the first of its kind in the Southeast Asian country.
In the past, the husks of the coffee cherry were often used as fuel and fertilizer for plants. Processing the dried coffee cherry into cascara tea is a creative way that brings many benefits to human health and the environment. Not only that, a kilogram of cascara tea has a selling price of about VND 1.5 million (US$61.8), twice as high as Arabica coffee products.
Cascara, or coffee cherry tea, has a lot of nutritional value and brings health benefits such as weight loss and brain health, constipation relief for the digestive system, and many antioxidants that help make drinkers' skin smooth. Manufacturing the special tea also helps solve environmental problems and create green circular agriculture, which is a trend in the world as well as in Vietnam.
Currently, the company has signed contracts with 33 coffee farmers in Son La to provide 330 tons of ripe coffee cherries. Around 10 kilograms of fresh coffee must be used to produce 1 kilogram of tea and 2 kilograms of green coffee. Therefore, cascara tea output currently only reaches about 20 tons per year and 90 percent of tea products are consumed by customers in foreign countries.
