Tuoi Tre reporters have discovered several tea-making facilities in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong using tea wastes or innutritious tea leaves in their production and selling them as expensive high-quality products.

Most of the dishonest tea makers are situated on Tran Phu Street in Loc Tien Ward of Bao Loc City, which is considered as the city’s “street of tea,” thanks to dozens of facilities operating on the 1-km street.

From a tip-off by a tea trader, who says the tea makers all tend to mix their products with dirty ingredients to increase profits, Tuoi Tre undercover reporters penetrated the facility of a woman named Hong, a 3,500-square-meter plant that is capable of producing up to 6 tons of dried tea per day.

The ‘buffalo dung’ technology

Daily production normally starts at 7 a.m., when workers begin to pour fresh tea leaves into ten giant drying machines, each capable of treating 200 kg of leaves per turn. When the drying process runs for some 20 minutes, two other employees take out six dirt-covered sacks, each containing 30kg of the reddish waste tea leaves, and dump these byproducts into the machines.

Chien, the technical head at the facility, frankly revealed they have a name for the reddish tea leaves, which is ‘cut trau’ (literally translated as “buffalo dung”).

‘Cut trau’ are the leftovers of the treated green tea, and “have no nutrition at all”, he added.

Each drying machine will be added with 8 kg of the waste leaves, plus up to 10 kg of another dirty ingredient, the green tea powder, to increase the weight of the products.

The green powder is first poured onto the floor, then mixed with water, and stirred by the bare feet of the employees before it is put into the machines.

Still, Hong has yet another innutritious ingredient to complete the dirty tea-making production: the tea leaves falling to the ground which she hires people to collect from the local plantations.

Meanwhile, Dung, the female owner of a similar dishonest facility nearby, chooses to use tea leaves discarded by other tea-making plants in the northern Vinh Phuc Province to mix with the fresh leaves.

While Hong only has to buy the tea byproducts at only VND7,000 per kg, her complete tea product fetches up to VND26,000 a kg.

Her facility consumes some 400 – 400 kg of the waste tea leaves and green tea powder to produce four to five tons of tea. This means a daily profit of nearly VND10 million (US$475).

Dung also sells the products at prices that are three times higher than the cost of the dirty ingredients.