Vietnam’s tea exports for calendar year 2014 dipped 5.30% in volume and 0.20% in value on-year to 134,000 tonnes valued at US$229 million MARD reported.
According to MARD unfavourable weather conditions in the early months of 2014 including prolonged droughts and heavy rainfall in several key tea-growing areas during the main cropping season had a negative impact on tea production for exports in many localities.
Other factors impeding the industry were that countries like Taiwan applied stricter rules of origin and globally there was an over supply. However, more importantly MARD pointed out that Vietnamese producers have been stymied by a lack of branding and niche marketing. 
Domestic tea producers have yet to develop a consumer oriented marketing strategy aimed at adding value and marketing select brands targeting specific foreign markets. Most producers still take a strategy of selling tea in bulk with low to no added value.
MARD cautions that the tea industry will remain vulnerable to downward demand-led price pressure as long as it continues to be treated as a commodity – fungible and indistinguishable from tea of any other country.
But after all the dire warnings, MARD believes the market has reached a bottom with prices and sales likely to rise in 2015.
To assist Vietnam’s tea producers open up new markets abroad, MARD has teamed up with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) to help them regularly conduct  trade promotion and marketing activities at international fairs, expos and trade events.
Doan Trong Phuong, Chairman of the Management Board under the Lam Dong Tea Joint Stock Company (Ladotea) in turn said Vietnam has even encountered difficulties over  the past year exporting black and green tea products to traditional markets such as Taiwan, Russia, the Middle East and Pakistan.
Last year, the price of Vietnamese tea in the global marketplace jumped 5.76% compared to the sales price in 2013 and stood at US$1.711 per tonne.  However this was only  65% of the top world price for the highest quality tea.
Many traders have been reporting that the sales prices of Vietnamese tea is at bargain basement level prices because it is being plagued by rumours of high levels of pesticides and as a result is considered poor quality.
Fortunately, more and more tea growers have become aware of the pitfalls of the indiscriminate use of pesticides and this problem can be rectified through the use of more modern technologies they said.