''ENTREPRENEUR STARTING UP BY EXPORTING BANANAS'' COULD ONLY BE HUY LONG AN

Võ Quan Huy, intimately called Út Huy (Út means the youngest child), is the Director of Huy Long An Co., Ltd located in Mỹ Bình Commune, Đức Huệ District, Long An province. He has been well-known as a notable entrepreneur in the banana exporting sector.  Adopting organic agriculture, Huy Long An has successfully exported ten thousands of bananas to strict markets such as Korea, Japan and Singapore.

Út Huy shares his story developing the company.

After participating in the VEES-NET signing ceremony of the TOURIST project, Dr Phan Thanh Định, Vice President of USSH held a field trip to Huy’s farm in Long An province for 80 students of the Faculty of Tourism. The activity aimed to boost creativity and startup spirit for university students. The field trip occured on Nov 7th, 2020 with the presence of Dr Phan Thanh Định - Leader, Dr Lê Thanh Hòa - Head of Faculty of Geography, Dr Trần Đình Lâm - Director of CVSEAS, Nguyễn Võ Hoàng Mai M.A - Director of Van Khoa Scientific Services And Tourism Company Limited and academic staff of Faculty of Geography, USSH.

Dr Định (left) and Mr Huy (right) at the field trip.

In the field trip, USSH team had an opportunity to meet Út Huy in person and listen to his story from the first stages of setting up the company till today when he has made considerable achievements in many fields. The “king of bananas'' shared that he was born into a family with farming tradition. He experienced a tough childhood and had to earn a living by driving tractors at the age around 16-17. Nevertheless, he always accumulated experience from his employment and nurtured a hope of establishing his own company with all he had. Though having faced lots of failures and heavy financial losses when starting up with rubber tree and sugarcane, he learnt priceless lessons from those unsuccessful trials with the not-giving-up will.

Due to his strong will to overcome hardship, learn new skills and develop work ethics, he was able to find the appropriate business model with banana plants, trees that brought a big profit for his company. He not only did business for his own financial benefits but also extended the business model by cooperating with local farmers to increase cultivation areas as well as improving their incomes. Now, the area of banana plants in Long An and Tay Ninh are 30-40 hectares and 70 hectares  respectively. The profit on each hectare is VND100-250 million per year.

Also, Huy Long An placed important emphasis on banana's quality and the production as well. Since his farms are based on organic agriculture, he decided to raise 2,000 cows to build a closed and environmentally friendly agricultural model. That means, banana trunks are used as cows’ feed and cow dung is then processed to become manure for the plants. Thanks to science and technology, exported bananas have been highly appreciated regarding their high-quality. He proudly shared that Japanese guests were fascinated when visiting his organic farms and they did promote this model when coming back to Japan.

The field trip at the banana farm in Long An province was an opportunity for students to learn from reality as well as understand more about difficulties and challenges of a start-up. In another perspective, lectures hoped to boost the spirit of “dare to think, dare to do” and change the mindset of university students on startup.

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