'Mistakes' that cause poor quality honey

Vietnamese honey has a large amount of hydrolyzed honey and is easily fermented due to improper exploitation and farming.

Although Vietnamese honey meets the technical requirements in management and monitoring of chemical residues and is allowed to be imported into the EU market since 2013, the EU market still accounts for a low proportion of Vietnam's total honey export volume to the world market.

Many domestic and international experts pointed out the limitations of Vietnamese honey that need to be overcome at the workshop "Maintaining and expanding the market for Vietnamese honey products exported to the EU", organized by the Vietnam SPS Office on November 1 in Ho Chi Minh City with the support of the European Trade and Investment Policy Support Project (EU-MUTRAP).

Harvesting honey too early when it is still young causes a large amount of water to easily lead to fermentation, greatly affecting the quality of the honey.

From the beginning of the year to September 15, 2017, Vietnam's honey export output reached about 29,000 tons, of which only 1,469 tons went to the EU market. According to the analysis of Mr. Le Thanh Hoa, Deputy Director of the Vietnam SPS Office, Vietnam's demand for honey imports from EU partners is very large, bringing many opportunities to expand the market for businesses and importers and exporters.

However, the problem of Vietnamese honey entering the EU market is that there are still some barriers in quality management. In particular, ensuring technical regulations in harvesting and processing, complying with market regulations as well as importer requirements.

According to Mr. Hoa, to promote and help Vietnamese honey products penetrate deeply into the EU market, the focus is on improving the breeding, preservation, and packaging processes...

Accordingly, enterprises are the core factor in raising knowledge and awareness for image building, product promotion and enhancing the brand of Vietnamese honey.

Mr. Nicolaus Bieger, international expert of the EU-MUTRAP project, said that Vietnam needs to address quality challenges in honey production and processing, including moisture, yeast, feed residue, honey colour, etc.

At the same time, production and business units and importers and exporters need to quickly overcome the lack of understanding of quality and market trends such as the preference for green, clean, organic products... to meet consumer tastes in the EU market.

Mr. Nicolaus said that Vietnamese businesses make the "mistake" of harvesting honey too early when it is still young, so the large amount of water can easily lead to fermentation, greatly affecting the quality of the honey.

In addition, the beekeeping boxes are too small, it is necessary to create a larger space for the bee colony, then the number of bees will increase, the bees will be comfortable and have more and better quality honey. At the same time, the large beekeeping box will be airy, helping the honey to be drier, reducing the water content in the honey.

According to Ho Chi Minh City Law Newspaper