Exporting hundreds of thousands of quail eggs every day.

It was difficult to make an appointment with Mr. Pham Van Thinh, Director of Vuong Gia Hung Thinh Co., Ltd. because he was caught up in the work cycle. Especially during this period, he is expanding production, from the current 400,000 quails to more than 1 million.

On schedule, we were met by Mr. Thinh and led on a tour of Hung Thinh quail farm (Thien Tam commune, Vinh Cuu district, Dong Nai) with an area of 3.5 ha with 10 quail cold farms and processing facilities for quail eggs. This is the leading large quail farm in Vietnam with a brand of clean eggs that do not use antibiotics.

Having been to many quail farms, we were surprised when we entered Hung Thinh quail farm. The typical odour of quail farms is very unpleasant. However, at Hung Thinh farm, even though we stood close to the quail cages, we did not recognize any bad smell.

“That is the beauty of cold barns compared to raising them in wooden barns like conventional farms. The bad smell will be handled by the vacuum cleaner. Quail droppings are also cleaned regularly so there is almost no bad smell. Sometimes we even add an "extra dose" of probiotic treatment to improve the living environment for each quail", Mr Thinh explained.

Starting his business in Ho Nai quail farming village with about 700 quails initially, Mr. Thinh has experienced many failures, and epidemics..., especially the outbreak of bird flu in Vietnam in 2003 made quail farmers in Dong Nai confused. It was also a turning point that forced people like Mr. Thinh to think and invest in science and technology to sustain quail farming.

Mr Thinh began to research and learn about the closed livestock farming process, applying biosafety-oriented livestock farming to orient the export of products. Mr Thinh's organically raised quail eggs are already exported, while more than 1 million quail eggs are underwritten by households to be distributed and consumed domestically.

The epidemic and unstable prices are what make Mr Thinh worried, motivating him to be determined to produce quail eggs in a direction that ensures cleanliness, food safety and hygiene to find export markets. To be able to export quail eggs to a demanding market like Japan, Mr. Thinh has researched and perfected the biosafety and organic farming process.

From 2018 to 2022, Mr. Thinh persistently negotiated with Japanese and Australian partners to export instant quail eggs to these demanding markets. When the problem of disease safety was solved by Mr Thinh with the cold barn method, new problems arose. Finished quail eggs must have a beautiful design, boiled between the yolk and the white must not have a black halo in the middle...

Currently, each month, Vuong Gia Hung Thinh Company exports about 6 containers of instant quail eggs directly to Japan. In addition, about 10 additional containers were exported to the US and 10 containers to Australia.

“To achieve the above requirements, we must hire Japanese experts to advise on technical issues. At the same time, import a system of equipment with fully automatic egg boiling and product packaging processes. Thanks to that, the Company also saves labour in the deep processing process", Mr Thinh shared.

Ms Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai, Deputy Director of Dong Nai Sub-Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary said, Hung Thinh is a company that has changed the landscape of the Dong Nai quail farming industry and helped people look beyond this traditional livestock.

“We still have a lot of market space but lack methodical investment like Hung Thinh Company. Two instant quail egg products and fresh quail eggs of Hung Thinh Company were recognized by Dong Nai as 4-star OCOP products of the province during the evaluation in early 2022.

We also hope that in the province there will be more establishments raising quails in cold cages, investing in modern equipment to export quail eggs to other demanding markets," Ms Thanh Mai shared.

We arranged a meeting but Mr. Thinh's phone kept ringing. Most of the calls were related to coordinating the processing and packaging stages of the products for the next containers going to the US, Japan, Australia...

Mr Thinh added that he is being asked by foreign partners to nearly triple export output. This means that there will be about 1 million quail eggs exported to other countries every day. This is great pressure and not easy to achieve. But it means that opportunities are opening up for Dong Nai quail farmers in particular.