Vietnam's fish sauce industry key to Phu Quoc island's economy

Vietnam's fish sauce industry key to Phu Quoc island's economy

By Robert Templer

PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam (AFP): An uncorked bottle has a bouquet that hits you like a mule's kick and a taste that takes some acquiring, but on Phu Quoc this brown, syrupy liquid is regarded as nothing less than an elixir.

The Singapore-sized tropical island off Vietnam's southern coast is home to the premier manufacturers of nuoc mam, a pungent fish sauce as essential to the country's cuisine as olive oil in Italy or wine in France.

Making nuoc mam, like producing wine, is deceptively simple. Fish are dumped into vast wooden barrels, churned up with shovel loads of rough sea salt, covered with water and left to ferment.

But achieving a high quality sauce is an elusive process that depends on the catch of a particular small silvery fish known as ca com that is found around the island.

"We use only one kind of fish and no preservatives or chemicals," said Truong Van Hoa, owner of one of Phu Quoc's 80 fish sauce firms.

"We leave the fish in the barrels for a year to produce the best sauce whereas others just ferment it for a few months," said Hoa, who proudly shows off his quality certificates from the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City.

Most prized is the first nuoc mam run off from each of the three-metre (10-foot) barrels kept in dark warehouses filled with eyewatering fumes. To make cheaper sauce, the barrels are topped up with water for up to two further fermentations.

Nuoc mam has been a center of Phu Quoc's economy for a century but business has boomed since the end of the 1980s with 80 companies now making sauce to meet rising demand from the mainland and export markets.

But a shadow is looming over the large riverside houses built in recent years by factory owners who are the richest members of Phu Quoc's 60,000 population.

Catches are declining off the island as inland waters are depleted of fish and now a 10-day fishing trip will likely only net three tons of ca com, rather than the 10 tons vessels could catch a decade ago.

Just as worrying for a business that relies on its name and reputation are the manufacturers from as far away as Thailand, who take cheaper nuoc mam made from low quality mixtures of fish and label it as coming from Phu Quoc.

"Fake sauces harm our reputation and eat into our sales," said Hoang Minh, owner of a factory. "We have asked local governments across the country to check sauce sales and punish those selling fake Phu Quoc nuoc mam."

Thai companies are singled out for their sales of fake sauce and for taking inferior Vietnamese brands and repackaging them with Thai labels to cater to a widespread belief in Vietnam that imported goods are superior.

Manufacturers also complain that they are forced to sell their sauce through trading firms in Ho Chi Minh City who bottle and market it, taking a lion's share of the profits.

But grouping together for economies of scale in production and marketing are out of the question, according to Vu Thanh Lap, one of the island's wealthier manufacturers.

"It's impossible to standardize or industrialize our production. Each maker has its own traditional way of making the sauce," he said.

"The color and smells are very varied and everyone can tell the difference," he said with the indignant air of a Champagne vintner who has had his product compared to sparkling grape juice.