Weaving seagrass in Kim Son, Ninh Binh

The seagrass tree appeared in Kim Son, Ninh Binh about 2 centuries ago. From that time on, this tree has become the leading industrial tree of this land. Kim Son people used seagrass to create many products such as: mat, carpet, baskets, tray, box, plate, glass, cup, handbag, hats,… that are strong, attractive and have high economic value.

After the reunification of Vietnam, seagrass products of Kim Son has a much wider exporting market that are the Soviet Union, countries in the Easten Europe and some other countries, this brings people here with stable income. In recent years, the intergration of Vietnamese market to the world market has increased the standard income of Vietnamese, which makes the demand for a more diversed market with plentiful products go up, one of them are products from seagrass.

Seagrass products in Kim Son are becoming more and more diversed : seagrass rat, carpet, baskets, box, hat,… to meet the demands of Vietnamese and international markets. At present in Kim Son, 100% all the villages join in weaving seagrass products with more than 4,463 production bases, account for 50% of the total production bases in Ninh Binh province.

Mr. Ha Quang Diep-Manager of the Industrial Promotion and Consultation for Industrial Development Center of Ninh Binh said: to have a complete product, it must go through many stages. At first, our businesses work together with seagrass-exporting companies in Vietnam and the importing-seagrass companies in other countries to design attractive models in the market. These models are then sent to the craftsmen to make complete products, and if they reach the standard of these companies, they will guide many household to produce with large orders. Our craftsmen play a really crucial role in creating the new techniques of the bussinesses. At present, there have been thousands of models and all of them, even many are very complicated to make, are made by our craftsmen: “Many orders with sophisticated products and required in a short time always come to cooperate with Kim Son”, Mr. Diep stressed.

Beside the sophisticated technique, the producing seagrass products in Kim Son is also known for the invention in preventing must. From the support of Ninh Binh Science Support Fund, these businesses have succeeded in applying drying technique in tuynen brick processing line to use for seagrass and seagrass products, advancing the quality of drying and avoid fire risk when using traditional drying technique. Moreover, businesses have also succeeded in using polyascera glue to cover the face of seagrass products, help shaping and increasing the ability to prevent must. All of these efforts help our products stay strong on the thousand-kilometer seaway to other countries and help promoting exports in Kim Son in the highly competitive market.

To promote the seagrass industry develop, Ninh Binh has tried to developed the scheme to build infrastructure for Đồng Hướng Industrialization Zone with 17ha. Besides, to help bussinesses in exporting, Industry and Commerce Department of Ninh Binh together with Industrial Promotion and Consultation for Industrial Development Center of Ninh Binh and Kim Son District are doing programs to register their brandnames, completing the geographical directions for seagrass products here. This will attract more customers with bigger orders coming to Kim Son, creating long lasting output for our products.

(source: baomoi.com)