Cashew nuts containers are congested at ports in Italy

At the "Consulting session on exporting cashew products to Eastern and Western Europe" recently held by the Trade Promotion Agency (Ministry of Industry and Trade), Mr. Nguyen Duc Thanh, Vietnamese Trade Counsellor in Italy, stated that in the case of traders being tricked into exporting many containers of cashews to Italy two months ago,  the containers are still delayed in Italian ports.

The reason is that shipping lines require with each set of lost documents concerning the shipment, shippers have to pay a rather high deposit, from 110 to 150% of the container’s value (some shipping lines even require a deposit of 200% at first) in order to take out the cashew nut container to sell to other customers or bring them back to Vietnam.

Due to shipping lines requiring this large deposit, the deposit period is quite prolonged, from two to six years. Consequently, many Vietnamese shippers are currently unable to afford this cost, causing many containers of cashew nuts to be delayed at Italian ports and incur additional warehousing fees and other costs every day.

Therefore, Mr. Thanh assumed that it would take a lot of time and effort to solve this case.

In this specific case, Vietnamese businesses exporting cashews to Italy had a total of 35 cashew nut containers whose documents they lost control ofT, with a total value of more than $7 million.

According to Mr. Thanh, Italy imports approximately $80 million of cashew nuts every year, 60%of which are Vietnamese. Cashews are increasingly favored among Italians. Italians like to eat nuts and to use cashews in vegetarian diets, or as a snack.