Hong Ngoc Private Enterprise originated from household who started the family business from 2005 with main activities of seedlings cultivation and planning, and test of agarwood production artificially on the Aquilaria tree. Seeing the benefit for local people and enterprise, with support from competent agencies of Nui Thanh district, the company invested in a production unit of artificial agarwood and products at Nui Thanh industrial cluster. Till 2006, the enterprise came into operation with 80 employees, including 50 workers working in workshop and 30 workers as tree planning workers.

Before applying CP, the main problem of the company was solid wastes and wastewater. Annually, the enterprise discharged over 100 tons of residues. The residues when stored for a long time in the enterprise premises will cause leakages of oil to the soil, affecting the groundwater quality in the area.

In addition, the factory’s wastewater exceeded the limit of TCVN 5945-2005 several times (COD (105mg/l) was 1.3 times higher, BOD (50.8mg/l) was approximately equal to the allowed limit, TSS (172mg/l) exceeded 1,7 times. For solving these problems, in 2009, the factory received the support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade via the Cleaner Production in Industry Component (CPI) to conduct Cleaner Production Assessment and Application.

 Under the supporting of Ministry of Industry and Trade, on September, 2009 the enterprise had implemented CP assessment. During the first phase (from September 2009 to January 2010), the enterprise established a CP team led by Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc – Director of the enterprise and other 8 members to assess the whole production line. After the Cleaner production assessment (CPA) and identification of waste line, the Team has conducted mass and energy balances for the whole production line. All collected data have been used to analyze and identify Cleaner Production options for each production step.

After conducting CPA and identifying improvement options, the enterprise had implemented 11 CP options can bring quick results with a total investment of VND 1.079 billions. Such application has brought about VND 2 billion in 2010. In the second phase (from January 2010 to November 2010), under the supporting of technical and financial components CPI, the company has actively implemented high-investment options to address thoroughly the emerging environmental issues as replace the old cookers by new cookers with higher efficiency to recovery oil, construct a treatment system of supply water to the agarwood powder rinsing process to reduce solid waste and bring benefits to enterprise. Benefits from those solutions are 844 million dong in 1st quarter of 2011.

Particular benefits derived from Cleaner Production are as follows: