Striking it rich in Vietnam
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Eccentric 'caviar king' makes a big splash with golden eggs from albino sturgeon
At a sturgeon farm on a pristine lake near this southern town, a worker hoists a large white fish out off the water. “It’s an albino,” says Vietnam’s eccentric “Caviar King” Le Anh Duc, adding triumphantly “Gold eggs!”
Not only are the eggs from the rare sturgeon – Duc has just 40 albinos out of half a million fish – an off-white “gold” colour but they are also a money-spinner.
Albino caviar can sell for up to US$100,000 per kilogram, compared to black Beluga caviar, a snip at just $5,000-$10,000 a kilo, according to industry figures.
Duc, a jovial Russia-educated businessman with a love of risky ventures, is a man with a mission – to get “Made in Vietnam” caviar onto dinner tables across the world at a reasonable price – starting with the country best known for its penchant for the salted fish eggs.
“If we can sell our caviar to Russia – where really they know about caviar – then people will understand this is a top quality product,” said the 36-year-old entrepreneur, who already has a slew of other projects, from real estate to seaplanes, under his belt.
His company, Caviar de Duc, has already signed an agreement with a Russian importer to sell two to four tonnes to Russia next year, although some Vietnamese seafood producers are already warning that the collapse of the Russian rouble could hit exports.
Long beloved of the rich and famous, caviar is an expensive, high-end delicacy, but one now in crisis. Wild caviar production has fallen from a high of some 3,000 tonnes per year in the 1970s to almost zero.
Rampant over-fishing and pollution in caviar’s birthplace, the Caspian Sea, mean the wild beluga sturgeon is now critically endangered.
In 1998, traditional caviar production from natural fisheries was strictly limited by a system of quotas imposed by the United Nations Convention on Endangered Species, prompting greater interest and investment in sturgeon farming.
Italy, which has been farming sturgeon for decades, is now the world’s top farmed caviar producer, and a new generation of newcomers like Vietnam are eyeing a slice of the market.
Duc has some 500,000 sturgeon spread across six farms in Vietnam, all in hydroelectric dam reservoirs leased from the communist government.
This year his fish produced some five tonnes of caviar. Duc wants to more than treble his output by 2017 and is ultimately dreaming of producing 100 tonnes of high-quality caviar a year.
“Now, caviar is like a hyper-luxury product... but it’s also a healthy, delicious product. More people should eat caviar,” he said.
Vietnam’s natural advantage
Most of the 250-400 tonnes of caviar on the global market each year now come from farmed sturgeon, according to World Sturgeon Conservation Society (WSCS) estimates.
In Russia, previously one of the biggest suppliers, “the natural population [of sturgeon] has practically disappeared”, said Paolo Bronzi, vice president of the WSCS.
Demand is increasing – spurred by the flood of newly-wealthy consumers in Asia and the Middle East – and there is growing pressure to find a new, sustainable way to feed the industry.
Sturgeon, like salmon, are relatively easy to farm. The WSCS estimates supply could increase to 500-750 tonnes a year within a few years.
Vietnam is well placed to fill the demand.
It already boasts a big aquaculture industry, with large export-oriented prawn and catfish farms, although these have been sometimes hit by food safety concerns.
Duc is fanatic about quality. He does not use hormones or antibiotics and keeps the fish in large cages with fewer fish to reduce stress levels.
He also opposes the use of borex – a standard but toxic preservative used in most caviar – using only salt. His tins last just two months, but he is looking into Japanese hi-tech freezing technology.
He has turned down offers to wholesale to the big-name brands that dominate the industry, aiming instead to build a reputation for Vietnamese caviar.
Some new producers, in particular China, suffer from perceived food-safety issues, said WSCS’s Bronzi, but there is no reason that Vietnamese caviar can’t storm into the market.
“I don’t think that caviar coming from new countries will be always confined because of its origin... It depends on the new customers, the dealers and obviously on the prices,” he said.
‘They told me I was crazy’
Duc’s sturgeon farming experiment began in 2007 with 50,000 fingerlings after he defied expert advice and decided that sturgeon could live in Vietnam’s warmer waters.
But his first caviar harvest was last year, as sturgeon take years to mature.
“The scientists, they told me I was crazy,” he said.
The Russian experts he had hired all flew home in disgust when he insisted the fish would thrive in Vietnam’s reservoirs, some 10 degrees Celsius warmer than the sturgeon’s favoured habitat.
Now, he has more customers than he can handle in Vietnam as the burgeoning elite develop a taste for global delicacies.
Duc already supplies many of the country’s five-star hotels and regularly provides for high-end parties – from soirees hosted by the French ambassador in Hanoi to a birthday party for the daughter of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.
“The quality is very good,” said Sakal Phoeung, executive chef at the Sofitel Saigon Plaza, which uses Caviar de Duc.
“Of course the eggs are smaller than caviar we can find in Russia or Iran but in terms of quality, taste, it is really close to that,” he said.
