Looking back in 2022, while the export turnover of the cashew industry reached 3.08 billion USD, the import turnover of raw cashews consumed 2.678 billion USD. This shows that Vietnam's cashew processing and exporting activities bring very low value. It is also because of the main export of pre-processed cashews, so Vietnam's cashew industry is always dependent on international traders and is not allowed to determine prices in the market. For many years in a row, Vietnam's cashew industry has suffered from "above anvil, under a hammer" when it is forced to price in both the raw cashew and kernel markets. increased while the kernel price continued to decline. The pressure on the Vietnamese cashew industry has become even heavier when many African countries, which only specialize in exporting raw cashews, are starting to invest in cashew kernel processing. For example, in Ivory Coast, which is the world's largest exporter of raw cashew nuts, Dr. Adama Coulibaly, General Director of the Ivory Coast Cotton and Cashew Council, said that in 2022, the country has exported 36,807 tons of cashew kernels to many markets such as the US, EU, Australia... Although this figure is still very low compared to Export volume of more than 500 thousand tons of cashew kernels from Vietnam, but also shows that Ivory Coast is trying to reach a higher segment instead of just selling raw cashews as before. This leads to the risk that raw cashew suppliers of the Vietnamese cashew industry will turn into competitors in the cashew kernel market in the near future. Besides being under pressure from other countries' cashew kernels, Vietnam's cashew kernels are also under pressure from other nuts. Typically, almonds are currently in a state of oversupply, causing the price to drop sharply, even cheaper than cashews. Therefore, international roasters and retailers are prioritizing other nuts over cashews, and consumers also tend to choose cheaper nuts. “Revolution†in processing Faced with increasing pressures, the Vietnam Cashew Association (VINACAS) is promoting the development of a "Strategy to develop Vietnam's cashew industry in a new situation" to submit to the Government. The policy is aimed at two goals: strongly developing deep processing, gaining a worthy position in the global cashew value chain and strongly developing the raw material area towards quality and efficiency. VINACAS believes that, looking at the positive side, current challenges are an opportunity to help Vietnam's cashew industry gain more motivation, focus resources for the "strong revolution" in technology and equipment, to meet the needs of Vietnam's cashew industry. demand for deep transformation in cashew processing. In fact, over the years, many enterprises have actively invested in modern machinery and equipment to enhance deep processing. As a result, besides traditional products such as salted roasted cashews, roasted salted cashews, and salted roasted silk shells, many new products were born, which were positively received by the market such as honey cashews, spiced cashews. flavor, wasabi cashews, white sesame dried cashews, cashew candy… Typically, Tan An Agricultural Products Processing and Food Export Company Limited (Tanimex - LA) has invested in deep processing since 2012 with the first product being fried salted cashews. After that, Tanimex - LA developed other products such as honey cashews, wasabi cashews, salted roasted cashews, and dried cashews. Similarly, Long Son Joint Stock Company is also promoting processing and exporting deeply processed cashew nuts. Currently, Long Son has quite a lot of deep-processed cashew products, such as salted roasted cashews, roasted salted cashews, fried salted cashews, sesame, cheese, garlic and chili... Although cashews are processed Deep processing still accounts for a relatively modest proportion of Long Son's cashew nut exports, but the company is persistently following this path to gradually increase the proportion of deeply processed products in the export structure. Or like Hoang Son 1 Company, in the past time, Another enterprise that has also achieved a lot of success with deep-processed products is Long An Export Processing Joint Stock Company (Lafooco). Lafooco's processed cashew nuts have been on shelves at many supermarkets in China, Hong Kong, Canada, Japan, Europe... In addition to exporting through traditional channels, Lafooco has sold goods abroad through e-commerce channels. from Amazon and has received positive feedback from customers. In its development orientation, Lafooco said it will continue to research and develop a variety of instant products, snacks, and foods with cashew ingredients. According to businesses, deep-processed cashew nuts have a higher value, through which businesses achieve better profit margins. In particular, deep-processed cashew nuts also open up opportunities for Vietnamese cashew businesses to export with their own brands, thereby enhancing the position of Vietnam's cashew industry in the international market.