Entrepreneur Nguyen Hong Dang, Co-founder of Namix High-Tech Agriculture Company: Turning agricultural waste into clean soil
Nguyen Hong Dang and his team at Namix researched and found a way to “transform” agricultural waste into clean soil and organic fertilizer. The product is not only popular domestically, but also exported to demanding markets.
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| Entrepreneur Nguyen Hong Dang, Co-founder of Namix High-Tech Agriculture Company |
Clean soil from agricultural waste
Right from the early days of starting his business, Nguyen Hong Dang oriented towards producing clean soil products, aiming to develop a circular economy in agriculture.
With that goal, the young man Nguyen Hong Dang, who is an environmental engineer, together with his colleague Nguyen Duc, an agricultural engineer, researched methods to develop a variety of good quality soils, produced using high technology.
After many experiments, two young engineers have created a type of soil that uses bio-composting technology and mixes mineral rock, processed substrate, coconut peat, whole rice husks, tree bark, specifically for separate groups of plants grown in pots and trays...
With organic fertilizer products from waste from livestock farms, the raw material processing process lasts for many months, helping to completely eliminate pathogens. Parameters such as pH, Ec… are guaranteed to create a favorable environment for plant growth.
Raw materials are composted and watered to maintain moisture, and microbial preparations are added. During the composting process, the clean soil is regularly monitored for temperature. One of the important steps in the production process is to ensure adequate air supply for aerobic organisms to grow rapidly, thereby helping to reduce odors.
After screening, the product is mixed with perlite, vermiculite... to increase porosity and nutrients. Currently, Namix supplies soil and substrate products to the market including vegetable soil, flower soil, multi-purpose soil, cactus and succulent growing medium, ornamental plants...
Nguyen Hong Dang said that all processes at Namix are monitored very closely and carefully. Just a little error in the production process such as insufficient incubation time or too long incubation time will lead to the product quality not being guaranteed.
Thanks to strict procedures, Namix has been known to customers as a clean soil producer, applying biological solutions to safely process selected agricultural by-products, combined with quality imported materials, producing optimal products specifically for each group of plants.
“In fact, the circular economy has appeared in Vietnam for a long time, typically the VAC model (garden - pond - barn). Wherever there is an activity of using the output of one stage as input for the next stage, that is the circular economy. It sounds simple, but to develop strongly and apply high technology, not many units have implemented it, especially the activities of recycling, reusing, and treating waste to help circulate in the agricultural value chain. Namix reuses agricultural by-products such as whole rice husks, tree bark, processed coconut peat, mushroom spawn, straw, etc. to produce potting soil and organic fertilizer, helping to optimize costs,” said businessman Nguyen Hong Dang.
Creating green agriculture in urban areas
Sharing about his initial goal when deciding to start a business with land for growing trees, Nguyen Hong Dang recalled the time in 2012, when he and his colleagues first came up with the idea.
Before starting Namix, the founders had established a website specializing in selling supplies and plant varieties for home gardening. Thanks to that, Nguyen Hong Dang quickly discovered the difficulties in gardening of the people, such as seeds not germinating, plants not growing well, yellow leaves, easy to wither...
“The reason is partly due to poor soil, partly due to the lack of professional knowledge of most people, so they cannot ensure proper care of their plants,” said Hong Dang.
From here, Namix high-tech clean soil was born to help hobbyists and enthusiasts garden more easily, as well as contribute to the development of green agriculture in the heart of the city.
Namix products are designed specifically for each specific group of plants, such as vegetable soil, flower soil, ornamental plant soil, etc. In each of these products, the soil will be integrated with the appropriate amount of fertilizer and nutrients, helping users to just plant the plants and take simple care of them while still producing good results.
Work is constantly developing, in early 2024, Namix launched a high-tech clean soil version on an industrial scale, serving large-scale farms and gardens at a better price.
Continuously research and improve products
Successfully manufacturing and commercializing a product is always a difficult journey. For each soil product, Namix's engineering team usually has to spend 3-4 years to research, test and complete.
“Sometimes, we produce well, but we are not sure if we can bring it to market, we still need more testing,” Nguyen Hong Dang shared.
For example, with the industrial-scale clean soil product Nong Pho recently developed by Namix, the Company has sent samples to a number of partners, because the cultivation conditions in each area may be different in terms of water sources, regional climate, environmental quality, etc.
During the testing process, Namix team received feedback from the farmers directly. After observing and selecting, Namix will collect these test products to continue to improve.
“The conditions in the lab are always perfect, but in reality, they are not. That is why we always try and fix it many times to produce the most realistic product,” said Nguyen Hong Dang.
Even for products that have been successfully commercialized, Namix still continuously observes, monitors and researches improvements every year. Therefore, Namix products have better and better quality, with unchanged selling prices. This is also one of the reasons why customers trust and always choose Namix soil.
Businessman Nguyen Hong Dang said that Namix has invested in mechanizing the production process by using more machines, and the production area has also been expanded with larger output, to optimize costs. At the same time, the company has also implemented digital transformation for administrative and sales tasks... to save costs and human resources.
“If before, sales were quite 'cumbersome' with a lot of customer information, now, through the digital platform, we integrate all necessary information such as sales volume, revenue by day, week, month... Customer data is also stored and easily searched whenever needed,” shared the founder of Namix.
In addition to direct sales, Namix also sells through a system of more than 500 agents and distributors, mainly concentrated in large cities such as Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Namix clean soil is very popular with people, so the company has a stable customer base. Each month, distributors can sell more than 10 tons of Namix potting soil.
Not only that, Namix high-tech clean soil is also trusted by foreign customers. Since 2021, Namix clean soil products for planting trees have been successfully exported to Singapore.
However, founder Nguyen Hong Dang said that in the long term, Namix will still focus on domestic consumption because the climate and soil in each country are very different, so the products are not easily suitable. Not to mention, soil has a large weight, so logistics costs are high, affecting the price and business efficiency.
After developing well domestically, Namix will target markets near Vietnam such as Cambodia, Thailand, Laos... These are countries with climates quite similar to Vietnam, geographically close, and convenient and economical road transportation.
In 2020, Namix reached the final round of the 2020 Rural Youth Innovation Startup Project Competition, organized by the BSA Center in collaboration with the Rural Youth Committee (Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union). In November 2023, the enterprise was awarded the 3rd Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee in the field of economic development through the application of circular economy, promoting agricultural production in the city.
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