Vietnam: For the first time in history, cashew exports exceeded the 4 billion USD mark

The cashew industry in Vietnam has seen significant growth, with exports surpassing 4 billion USD for the first time, a milestone reached after more than 3 billion USD in previous years. This growth is largely due to investments in modern processing machinery, which have increased capacity to about 2 million tons per year. Despite this growth, Vietnam only contributes about 30% to the value chain as it mainly exports low-value pre-processed cashews, while the finished products are not yet on the market. The industry exports to over 90% of its product to the EU, US, and China. Export volumes have reached 696 thousand tons from January to mid-December, with prices increasing, and are expected to exceed 700 thousand tons for the first time by the end of the year.

Surpassing the 4 billion USD mark marks a new step forward for the cashew industry after many years of maintaining an export turnover of more than 3 billion USD. The first time the cashew industry exported more than 3 billion USD was in 2017. The field of processing raw cashews into cashew nuts for export has now invested in modern machinery to basically replace manual labor, increasing the processing capacity to about 2 million tons/year and is continuously increasing at a rapid rate. However, in general, Vietnam mainly exports low-value pre-processed cashew nuts, while finished cashew nuts reaching consumers have not yet developed, so Vietnam only accounts for about 30% of the cashew industry value chain. The trade and export of cashew nuts and processed foods from cashew nuts have been expanded to all developed markets in the world, in which the EU, the US and China are the 3 largest import markets accounting for over 90% of the export volume of the Vietnamese cashew industry. ...