Viet Tien Company Ltd.
Viet Tien Company Ltd., was established on 3rd August 2005. It formerly was a household business specializing in fish sauce production and trading as well as production of other foodstuffs up to the market needs. The family carried out the production and trading of their products by themselves and at the same time, acted as an agent to sell products for other local food producers. Until 1999, the household business moved up to a private enterprise. Gradually, it moved up to Viet Tien Company Ltd., with a fish sauce production factory of 5000 m2 at the Truong Xuan Industrial and Handicraft Zone, Tam Ky town, Quang Nam Province.
Before applying Cleaner Production (CP), the Company had frequently faced with environmental pollution due to wastewater and air emissions. The wastewaster had some parameters higher than the permissible level: SS was 1,59 times higher, BOD5 was 5,48 times higher, COD was 4,81 times higher than Vietnamese Standard: TCVN 5945 : 2005. In order to solve that issue, in 2008, the Company has approached to the Cleaner Production in Industry Component (CPI) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
With the support of Quang Nam Department of Industry and Trade and the CPI, in 2008, the Company carried out Cleaner Production Assessment. From Oct 2008 to June 2009, the Company set up a Cleaner Production Team including 2 members and led by Ms. Thai Thi Huong - Director of the Company. The Team has conducted a walk-through assessment on the production line at place. After the assessment and identification of all waste streams, the Team has conducted mass and energy balances for the whole production line. All collected data have been used to analyse and identify Cleaner Production options for each production steps.
After conducting CPA and identifying improvement options, the Company carried out 10 no-cost and low-cost options. Such application has brought about VND 70 - 110 millions each year. In the second stage (since July 2009), the Company actively implemented high-investment options to improve product quality and solve completely the environmental issues at place, specifically investing VND 890 millions for installing a new synchronous production line (replacing the concrete curing tanks by new ones) to reduce fish sauce leaking to the environment; changing manual filtering and bottling system by synchronous automatic filtering an bottling system to reduce the volume of fish sauce seeping in the filter cloth and spillages due to manual bottling. The economic benefit from those solutions is VND 240 millions each year by reducing raw materials and environmental pollution.
Particular benefits derived from Cleaner Production are as follows:
| Technical benefit | Economic benefit | Environmental benefit |
| Stage 1 |
| Annual reduction of 30 % wastewater
Pollutant concentrations are under permissible limits |
| Annual reduction of 5.4% of raw materials, chemical consumption | Annual saving of VND 70 millions |
| Stage 2 |
|
| Annual reduction of 7.2% - 20.3% raw materials, chemical consumption | Annual saving of VND 110 millions (2009) and VND 53 millions (1st Quarter of 2010) |
Typical Cleaner Production options of the Company are as follows:
| No. | CP Option | Investment | Performance | CP technique |
| 1 | Strictly control the imported materials to reduce the solid impurities in the fish inputs. | Low cost | Improved product quality | PC |
| 2 | Well-preserve the materials during transportation and importing in order to reduce the amount of spoiled materials.. | No cost | PC |
| 3 | Recruit long-term employees to work with the company, training in combination with enhancing the attitude of material saving for them. | Low cost | Reduced raw materials loss | GH |
| 4 | Establish an appropriate fining and rewarding regime. | Low cost | GH |
| 5 | Strictly control the stage of bottle purchase to eliminate immediately the too dirty ones. | No cost | Saving bottle cleaning costs, increase product quality | GH |
| 6 | Carefully and regularly keep clean the production site to prevent the food from being contaminated. | Low cost | Improved product quality | GH |
| 7 | Immediately fix all caps of the curing tanks | Low cost | GH |
| 8 | Install a new synchronous line: change into using the new curing tank system | VND 890 millions | Annual saving of VND 253 millions (estimated) | TC |
| 9 | Install a new synchronous production line: changing the manual filtering and bottling line by a new and synchronous one. | EM |
Remarks: GH: Good Housekeeping; EM: Equipment Modification; TC: Technology Change, PC: Process Control
Perceiving the benefits from CP application, the company insisted to maintain the CP team activities and integrate CP in the general management system at place. In order to facilitate CP application, a simple environmental management system has been developed. The Company has also set up environmental policy, whereby it is requested that the environmental protection law and other regulations should be followed strictly, ensuring the sustainable development of the company and reducing waste emission sources. The Company has integrated process management system with the environmental management system, therefore, energy and material consumption is monitored at the same time with the monitoring of pollutant parameters in the waste streams.
The environmental monitoring plan has been initiated. The aim of the plan is to monitor significant improvements from applying CP or to adjust if there is any reduction in environmental benefits. The environmental monitoring system covers both air and wastewater.
CP not only brings about benefits from energy saving, emission minimization, reduced water consumption, but also helps the Company increase production, improve product quality, prove prestige. The implemented CP options at the Company are typical case studies for enterprises in the sector of fish sauce production in Vietnam./.
