Ha Noi (VNA) – For many years, duck products from Tran Huu Farm Ltd, have been a familiar shelf-filler to people in the UK.
But not so many people know how much work owner 70-year-old Tran Chi Nguyen has put into running the farm with its hundreds of thousands of ducks – not to mention the effort it took to build a trademark for duck products in the UK.
With a warm Hue accent, he told a Viet Nam News Agency correspondent in his house on Kensington Street, London about the ups and downs of his remarkable career.
Nguyen grew up in a family with know how in the food business. His family n Vi Da Village in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue used to provide food for the Royal Family under the reign of King Bao Dai.
When he was 15, he left home for London to study and after graduating from the Institute de Francaise’s Economic Department, he returned to London to start his career.
Over the 55 years Nguyen has lived in England with a variety of employment. He has been involved in real estate, supermarket and restaurant businesses.
In 1996, he started working on a project to set up a duck farm in Wales. The project got the UK government’s approval in 1999 and was recognised as am intellectual property that brought Nguyen an award worth 40 percent of its total value.
With an organic raising method, his farm, which has an uninterrupted chain of egg incubator, breeding area, processing area and delivery to supermarkets, annually produces 550,000 ducks and 12 million duck eggs trademarked “Bach Thao” for the UK market, earning 25 million pounds.
Nguyen boasts that his “Bach Thao” eggs are considered a unique product in London with a high nutrition content. Since 1991, the UK’s Ministry of Industry and Trade has financed the Tran Huu Farm Ltd to produce the eggs.
The farm employs up to 120 local labourers and workers from Asian, European and the Middle East countries.
As the farm’s president, the ever-energetic owner shuttles back and forth between London and Wales to monitor his 200-ha farm.-Enditem
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