Jasmine near Hanoi: the association buys the entire crop in the field at 55,000–58,000 dong per kilo

On a sandbar in Thai Thuy village, Soc Son commune, Hanoi, the jasmine harvest continues into September as well. What is picked is only the buds before they open. Once the flowers open at night and release their scent, they can no longer be used for scenting premium tea. The Vietnam Agriculture and Environment Newspaper (Nông nghiệp và Môi trường) reported this on September 24, 2026.

The area under concentrated cultivation is about 11 ha, with more than 150 households taking part. The buyback price, 55,000–58,000 dong per kilo, is stable, and the Phu Lo Jasmine Association (Hiệp hội Hoa nhài Phù Lỗ) comes to the fields to buy up the entire picked crop of buds, sending it to the scenting step for premium jasmine tea.

For the Japanese side considering OEM of flavored or scented tea, this article's value lies not in the price of the tea but in the fact that the unit price of the scenting flower and the size of the producing area are visible in numbers. It is one step upstream of how much per kilo you pay for already-scented tea.

Only buds are picked; opened flowers are discarded

Over 150 households on 11 ha; it is the association that buys the whole crop

According to the report, Thai Thuy village runs at a yield of 3–4 ta per sao (360 square meters) a year (1 ta = 100 kg, so 300–400 kg). That is about 10 tonnes per ha, with sales of up to 580 million dong a year. It is a mainstay crop with higher returns than rice.

The cultivation itself takes little work. It needs weeding once or twice a year and fertilizing two or three times, and because the old branches cut back become cuttings for seedlings, no seedling cost is required. What to watch for, they say, is bud rot in the rainy season.

'Opened flowers lose their scent' — words from the field

Appearing in the article is Nguyen Duc Ngoc (42). Dropping buds into a basket at his waist, he says, 'A flower that has opened loses all its scent and is no longer of a quality usable in the scenting step for premium tea.' Leave it a night and the flower opens, and the day's labor vanishes.

Ngoc's household plants one sao, picks about 60 kg of fresh buds a month, and takes in about 3.5 million dong. The harvest season lasts half a year.

How much is 55,000–58,000 dong per kilo in yen

Decide the exchange rate before dividing

Vietnamese amounts are easy to misread by order of magnitude. triệu means one million, tỷ means one billion. This time only đồng and triệu đồng appear. Here we convert at the ¥1 = 163.60 dong as of September 25, 2026 (exchangerate-api.com).

Breaking down one sao's economics shows the upper limit

The article's values connect internally. Ngoc's 60 kg a month, stacked over half a year, is 360 kg a year, which falls within the village average of 3–4 ta per sao. Selling 360 kg at 58,000 dong gives about 20.88 million dong, and dividing by the six harvest months gives about 3.48 million dong a month, matching the article's 'about 3.5 million dong.'

Put the other way, this take is close to a figure calculated at the top of the buyback range. The 580 million dong per ha a year is also the upper value of 10 tonnes × 58,000 dong; at the lower 55,000 dong it is 550 million dong (about ¥3.36 million). It is worth citing the 580 with the understanding that it is a ceiling figure.

This unit price is delivered at the field, not an export price

There is a premise you cannot skip. 55,000–58,000 dong per kilo is the price at which the association buys from farmers at the field — neither an export price nor a landed-in-Japan price. Scenting and drying processing fees, logistics costs, and the association's cut ride on top of it. If used as a guide, it is a figure to place as the floor of cost.

60,000 dong in 2021, 54,000 dong in 2024 — did the price move?

Even within the same Soc Son, the figures do not line up

The same paper has reported on the Soc Son area before. A July 2021 article put Phu Lo's cultivation area at over 700 ha and wrote the buyback price at the time as 60,000 dong/kg. A May 2024 article covered Dong Xuan commune within Soc Son, at about 40 ha, 54,000 dong/kg.

The yen conversions for all three are values divided at the same September 25, 2026 rate, not the exchange rate of the time. The area column is not the shrinking trajectory of the same region but merely three figures of differing scope — commune, village, and area — placed side by side. The nominal price in dong is flat to slightly down across five years, and considering domestic price inflation, farmers' real take leans toward eroding.

How many tonnes the whole producing area yields a year does not come out of these figures

The three figures do not add up to a supply volume. The 2021 article writes Phu Lo's 700 ha shipments as a daily average of 10 tonnes, but applying this time's 'harvest is half a year' and multiplying gives 1,800 tonnes a year, or 2.6 tonnes per ha, which does not match this time's 'about 10 tonnes.' The yield per sao also differs more than twofold: Dong Xuan commune in 2024 was over 8 ta, Thai Thuy village 3–4 ta. You cannot multiply figures from different target regions and different reporting times to get the whole producing area's supply volume. It is faster to ask the association or the scenting plant how many tonnes came in last season.

Can Japanese tea and beverage makers buy this flower directly?

What you can obtain is not the flower but already-scented tea

Buds lose their value once they open, and this holds only within a distance where they can be carried from field to scenting plant the same day. Even with Noi Bai International Airport nearby, the freshness constraint does not change, and it is hard to premise carrying them to Japan as fresh flowers. What you can order is tea that has finished scenting, or processed goods such as essential oil.

In the 2024 article, Nguyen Van Trung, chairman of the Dong Xuan commune People's Committee, explains that besides selling flowers to agents and the Kim Anh tea factory, a jasmine cooperative has signed an exclusive supply contract for perfume, cosmetic, and medicinal raw material. The same article also touches on a 2019 export to Taiwan, but does not write whether it was fresh flowers or processed goods.

Apply your own blend ratio and the cost comes out

Even so, the meaning of seeing the flower's unit price is not small. The ratio of flowers to tea leaves used in scenting varies by plant and grade, but for your own specification it is known. Apply about ¥336–355 per kilo there and you can break down how much of the purchase price is the cost of the scent raw material, and the reason the higher grades that layer scenting repeatedly are expensive can be explained in numbers.

The move of producing areas reaching for processing happens in coffee too, and the case of Cau Dat's organic Arabica advancing to deep processing there too raises the question of what a Japanese roaster sources.

The April–June lots are decided the previous year

The harvest lasts half a year, but the flowers concentrate and the quality is best in April–June. Because the way the scent comes out differs from lots at the ends of the season, matching the same scent year-round requires lot-by-lot checking. The case of a Hai Phong farmers' cooperative blooming lotus in the off-season to double the unit price from the peak also shows that the price of a flower moves with the season it is bloomed. If you want to secure the peak-month lots, line up the talk during the previous year.

Tea leaves from Ha Giang, flowers from the Hanoi outskirts. Stop either and it cannot be made

What happened in the fields in 2021

Jasmine tea takes shape by joining northern-mountain tea leaves with flowers from the Hanoi outskirts. In July 2021, Nguyen Duc Lai, president of the Tra Hoang Long company headquartered in Phu Lo, appealed to the paper that he could not carry raw tea from the Ha Giang plant to Hanoi and could not send out export containers. The company is one of 10 that buy and support the 700 ha of flowers, and if the tea leaves do not arrive, it cannot buy the flowers. If no buyer appears, the buds lose their value the next morning.

Measure supply stability by the flower's producing area alone and you miss this structure. What to ask is the sourcing area of the tea leaves and the fallback means when transport stops.

Even the spent flowers have a buyer

Flower husks with the scent fully drawn out are bought up by cemeteries, so there is no part thrown away. The idea of standardizing and selling by part is shared with the case of Da Lat artichokes being bought up by part as well. The disposal cost of the residue after scenting can ride on the estimate, and the producing area's outlet is worth asking about as a matter of cost.

What you want to ask before getting an estimate

Six items to confirm with the counterpart

The last line matters for paperwork. Even in the same paper the designation changes, and copying an old place name into a contract gets it sent back.

The first step is comparing scents

If you move now, you can ask the tea trading company you deal with, in one line, 'do you have a sample of jasmine tea scented with Soc Son flowers?' Lining up samples with the guide that the flower's cost is about ¥336–355 per kilo lets you discuss, on the same footing as the counterpart, where the difference in scenting rounds and grade shows up in the estimate.

• Ngọt ngào hương nhài trên đồng bãi Sóc Sơn (Báo Nông nghiệp và Môi trường, September 24, 2026)
• Hợp tác xã hoa nhài thơm ngát Thủ đô (same paper, May 30, 2024)
• 700 ha hoa nhài có nguy cơ đổ bỏ (same paper, July 26, 2021)
• Exchange rate (exchangerate-api.com, as of 00:02 UTC September 25, 2026, ¥1 = 163.601694 dong)