{"id":1398,"date":"2026-07-28T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/?post_type=industry_news&p=1398"},"modified":"2026-07-27T22:07:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:07:55","slug":"quelam-circular-complex","status":"publish","type":"industry_news","link":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/industry_news\/quelam-circular-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"About 7.9 billion yen for five plants: can Ha Tinh's circular agriculture become a sourcing partner?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Ha Tinh Province in central Vietnam, the agricultural-inputs major Que Lam Group will build a circular-agriculture complex centered on five factories, investing a total of 1.276 trillion dong (about 7.88 billion yen converted at 1 yen = about 162 dong, as of July 2026). On May 29, 2026, the Ha Tinh Province people's committee approved the investment policy, and ground-breaking is expected from late August to early September of the same year. According to a chairman interview carried by Vietnam's agriculture specialist paper Nong nghiep va Moi truong on July 23, this complex is both a production base and a training facility for farmers. For Japanese sourcing managers, it is a story not of one more production area appearing, but of a supply network in which a single company holds everything from inputs to shipping<\/strong> rising in the north-central region, that is worth reading.<\/p>\n

A second 4F complex comes to Ha Tinh<\/h2>\n

The original article is a personal profile following Que Lam Group chairman Nguyen Hong Lam, not a press release about the new factory. Even so, the content of the investment is concrete. The 4F stands for the initials of Farm, Food, Feed, and Fertilizer, pointing to a design that closes everything from production to processing, consumption, and reuse of by-products within a single site. The company launched Vietnam's first 4F complex in the former Thua Thien Hue Province in mid-2020, and Ha Tinh is its second location.<\/p>\n

The centerpiece will be five factories. Plant nutrition (fertilizer) at 150,000 tonnes a year, rice milling and processing at 100,000 tonnes a year, microbial and medicinal-herb processing at 50,000 tonnes a year, animal nutrition (feed) at 50,000 tonnes a year, and solid-fuel charcoal derived from medicinal herbs at 10,000 tonnes a year. Lam states in the original text that \"4F must be a place that raises a new generation of farmers,\" and further positions the complex, in addition to its production function, as a \"base for research, demonstration, training, and technology transfer\" for Ha Tinh Province and the north-central region. What differs from other agricultural investments is that, rather than merely building factories, it houses alongside them a facility that teaches how to use them.<\/p>\n

The reason for choosing \"a pan of fire, a bag of rain\"<\/h2>\n

The original text begins from a plain question. Although there were other provinces courting Que Lam with more favorable natural conditions and generous incentives, why choose a land locally called \"chao lua, tui mua (a pan of fire, a bag of rain)\"? A climate where fierce heat and heavy rain come by turns looks unfavorable as a location for agricultural investment.<\/p>\n

The answer lies not in the land but on the side of relationships. According to the Ha Tinh Province paper Bao Ha Tinh, the company has signed cooperation agreements with 68 of the province's 69 communes and wards, its organically partnered rice paddies exceed 480 hectares, the pigs it raises in an organic value chain exceed 6,600 head, and its direct-sale shops within the province reach 13. The order is to build the sales network and the partner organizations first, and to place the factory once demand has firmed up. As the example of mung beans that find buyers at the field edge shows (Ha Tinh mung beans sell out at the field at high prices: will they benefit Japan's bean-sprout sourcing?<\/a>), this province is a region that has built up planting with buyers already decided even on a small scale, and manufacturing capacity is being retrofitted onto that.<\/p>\n

Lining up the five factories' capacities and schedules<\/h2>\n

According to the 1\/500 detailed plan published by Ha Tinh Province's electronic information portal, the site is 466,991.8 square meters, roughly 47 hectares, in Tien No hamlet, Cam Xuyen commune. The building area is about 102,679 square meters, staying at around 22% of the planned area. The rest is allocated to a regulating pond, an orchard, an organic-raw-material collection yard, wastewater treatment, and the like. The breakdown of the total investment of 1.276 trillion dong is the investor's own funds of 191 billion dong (about 1.18 billion yen) and raised funds of 1.085 trillion dong (about 6.70 billion yen). The project period is set at 50 years from the handover of the land.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Facilities<\/th>\nAnnual capacity<\/th>\nConstruction timing (months from land handover)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Plant-nutrition (fertilizer) factory<\/td>\n150,000 tonnes<\/td>\nMonths 1-15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Microbial and medicinal-herb processing factory<\/td>\n50,000 tonnes<\/td>\nMonths 1-15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Animal-nutrition (feed) factory<\/td>\n50,000 tonnes<\/td>\nMonths 1-15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Rice-milling and processing factory<\/td>\n100,000 tonnes<\/td>\nMonths 16-21<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Medicinal-herb solid-fuel charcoal factory<\/td>\n10,000 tonnes<\/td>\nMonths 16-21<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Crop and livestock farms and ancillary facilities<\/td>\nNo capacity stated<\/td>\nMonths 22-30<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n

What two former agriculture ministers and a current Politburo member said<\/h2>\n

What draws the eye in the original text is less the merits of the investment than the words of officials lined up as personal appraisals. Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong likened 4F to a \"great university for farmers\" and rated it a core of human-resource development in the agricultural field. He also said, half in jest, \"At his age, not even short of money, why wear himself out?\" and \"Everyone who meets Lam rolls up their sleeves, takes off their tie, and gets moving.\"<\/p>\n

Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan described the company's philosophy of organic, circular agriculture as \"the farming path of decent people.\" Tran Duc Thang, who is now a Politburo member and serves as secretary of the Hanoi City party committee, visited the company during his time as Minister of Agriculture and Environment, said its practice demonstrates a contribution to society and to farmers, and \u2014 the original text conveys \u2014 instructed the specialist departments to consider incorporating this model into the implementation content of national target programs and to provide budget support for scaling up. The positioning as a flagship case the government waves the flag for is clearly shown.<\/p>\n

Japanese sourcing managers should read just three lines now<\/h2>\n

First, of what is made on these 47 hectares, the candidates Japan can buy directly are limited. Of the total annual capacity of 360,000 tonnes, plant nutrition at 150,000 tonnes and animal nutrition at 50,000 tonnes are inputs consumed within the region. What can become export commodities are milled rice at 100,000 tonnes, microbial and medicinal-herb processing at 50,000 tonnes, and medicinal-herb solid-fuel charcoal at 10,000 tonnes, and even the milled rice has the domestic market as its main battlefield. It is closer to reality to view it not as a production area but as a counterpart from whom you can hold the cultivation specification<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Second, you need to match your time axis to the construction schedule. The order is even published: the three factories for fertilizer, microbes, and feed in the first 15 months, the rice-milling and solid-fuel-charcoal factories in months 16-21, and the farms and ancillary facilities in months 22-30. If ground-breaking is in autumn 2026 and it takes 30 months, everything through crop and livestock farming is in place by the first half of 2029. What to pin down this term is not a purchase contract but the work of getting the Japanese side's required specifications onto the design-stage documents. As with the organic-rice case that made a margin by reducing chemical fertilizer (Cutting chemical fertilizer for 200,000 yen in profit: the sourcing window opened by An Giang organic rice<\/a>), the agreement to switch is decided two years before the harvest.<\/p>\n

Third, the unit of traceability changes. In a structure where the same operator holds fertilizer, feed, and composting, the list of inputs used and the cultivation history fit within a single document lineage. The labor of gathering certificates of origin on a per-farmer basis decreases, but conversely the degree of dependence on a single operator rises. The direction is the same as the effort to route rice straw to inputs instead of burning it, but the scale and capital are of a different order of magnitude. One wants to structure the contract on the premise of a design philosophy that says \"to audit, it is enough to look at the factory side.\"<\/p>\n

A design that makes feed protein in-house takes effect on the market<\/h2>\n

What stands out in the plan drawings is a rearing facility for black soldier fly (ruoi linh den) that produces about 400 tonnes of dried pupae a year. The livestock scale is planned at 500 sows, 20 breeding boars, 4,000 fattening pigs, about 1,000 cattle, 45,000 laying hens, 40,000 broiler chickens, and 20,000 ducks. Seen as export volume it is small, but it is enough scale to demonstrate a cycle of feeding by-products to insects, returning their pupae to feed, and sending the residue to the fertilizer factory. It is a story of cutting feed-ingredient import dependence domestically, and also an attempt to build a production area resilient to swings in feed prices.<\/p>\n

There is a policy tailwind too. Prime-ministerial Decision No. 885 (June 23, 2020), a plan for the development of organic agriculture, set goals of expanding organically produced farmland to 1.5-2% of all farmland in 2025 and 2.5-3% in 2030. There is also a monetary goal: organic crop cultivation and aquaculture are to raise production value per hectare, versus non-organic, to 1.3-1.5x in 2025 and 1.5-1.8x in 2030. As for the positioning of scale, Ha Tinh Province's published materials go no further than conveying, as the investor's words, \"the largest 4F complex in the country and in Asia,\" and no third-party-verified record could be confirmed. Even so, one can read off a picture in which policy goals and private investment point the same way.<\/p>\n

Basic data to pin down before negotiations<\/h2>\n

If you consider making contact, you want to pin down the published factual relationships first. The following are items picked up from the original text and Ha Tinh Province's portal publications; prices and transaction terms are not included because they are unpublished.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Item<\/th>\nDetails<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Project name<\/td>\n4F Que Lam organic circular and ecological agricultural-economy complex<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Business entity<\/td>\nCong ty TNHH MTV Nong nghiep Organic Que Lam Lam Hong (a Que Lam Group subsidiary)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Location<\/td>\nTien No hamlet, Cam Xuyen commune, Ha Tinh Province<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Site area<\/td>\n466,991.8 sq m (about 47 ha) \/ of which building area about 102,679 sq m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total investment<\/td>\n1.276 trillion dong (about 7.88 billion yen)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Funding breakdown<\/td>\nOwn funds 191 billion dong \/ raised funds 1.085 trillion dong<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Investment-policy approval<\/td>\nMay 29, 2026 (Ha Tinh Province people's committee)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Scheduled ground-breaking<\/td>\nLate August to early September 2026<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Completion<\/td>\nWithin 30 months of land handover<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Project period<\/td>\n50 years<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Farmland plots<\/td>\nOrchard over 14.8 ha, advanced nursery over 5.1 ha, banana and forage grass about 8.7 ha<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Planned plantings<\/td>\nBuoi (pomelo), purple star apple, red-flesh dragon fruit, and others<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Infrastructure<\/td>\n15 m-wide trunk road, two substations, six wells, separate treatment of rainwater and wastewater<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Preceding base<\/td>\nThe 4F complex in the former Thua Thien Hue Province (operating since 2020)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n

Summary: place the specification before the purchase<\/h2>\n

Ha Tinh's 4F is not a production area that lines up finished products and waits. If you move, there are three steps in order. First, in line with the ground-breaking from late August to early September 2026, visit the 4F already operating in former Hue and see for yourself where the ledgers from inputs to shipping are generated. Next, by months 16-21 when the rice-milling factory starts up, have the Japanese side's requirements such as grade, moisture, and residue standards written into the design-stage documents. Finally, to avoid dependence on a single operator, evaluate in parallel small-lot producers in the same province who already have buyers (Three crops a year on 500 m2 for 200\u2013300 million dong in profit: how Ha Tinh's \"Korean melon\" makes money<\/a>). The points of contact are the investment division of the Ha Tinh Province people's committee and Que Lam Group's partnership-business division. The few months before ground-breaking are the only window in which conditions can be written in.<\/p>\n

References: N\u00f4ng nghi\u1ec7p v\u00e0 M\u00f4i tr\u01b0\u1eddng<\/a>\uff0fHa Tinh Province electronic information portal<\/a>\uff0fB\u00e1o H\u00e0 T\u0129nh<\/a>\uff0fGovernment of Vietnam official document (Decision 885\/QD-TTg)<\/a><\/small><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u30d9\u30c8\u30ca\u30e0\u30fb\u30cf\u30c6\u30a3\u30f3\u7701\u3067\u7dcf\u984d\u7d0478.8\u5104\u5186\u306e\u5faa\u74b0\u578b\u8fb2\u696d\u8907\u5408\u4f53\u304c\u7740\u5de5\u3078\u3002\u80a5\u6599\u304b\u3089\u7cbe\u7c73\u307e\u30675\u5de5\u5834\u306e\u80fd\u529b\u306830\u304b\u6708\u306e\u5de5\u671f\u3001\u8fb2\u5bb6\u7814\u4fee\u307e\u3067\u62b1\u304d\u8fbc\u3080\u8a2d\u8a08\u3092\u8aad\u307f\u89e3\u304d\u3001\u65e5\u672c\u306e\u8abf\u9054\u62c5\u5f53\u304c\u7740\u5de5\u524d\u306b\u683d\u57f9\u4ed5\u69d8\u3092\u5dee\u3057\u8fbc\u3080\u305f\u3081\u306e\u6bb5\u53d6\u308a\u3092\u5177\u4f53\u7684\u306b\u6574\u7406\u3057\u305f\u3002<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[1],"tags":[],"crop_category":[],"class_list":["post-1398","industry_news","type-industry_news","status-publish","hentry","category-vietnam-agri"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry_news\/1398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry_news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/industry_news"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"crop_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/crop_category?post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}