Consultant for Shantea Project HELVETAS

The project of “Developing high quality value chains for poverty reduction for ethnic minorities in Northern Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar” is funded by Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) and implemented by Helvetas Vietnam. The improvement of tea product quality and enhancement of tea sector’s competitiveness via reduction in processing cost are among the key objectives of the project. And this is critical to increase the added value generated for all players, including farmers, in Vietnam.

To date, various training sessions on processing techniques at factory level have been provided under assistance of the project. However, to follow such techniques, certain level of experience of the factory’s in-charge personnel on the visibility of the outputs at different processing stages and application of some traditional rules of thumbs are required. Relying on human senses for technical judgment on quality means that (a) the output quality cannot be consistent, (b) potential waste of cost due to overuse of power inputs, (c) difficulty to improve quality scientifically, and (e) heavily dependent on the availability of experienced individuals – unfavorable changes in personal mood is likely translated into lower quality of output. This basically implies that the effort of the project to increase tea quality is ceilinged by the limitations in technical measurements and automation in tea processing.      

Therefore, Helvetas is seeking for national organizational/individual consultant to conduct an assignment that addresses the above issue. Details of the work are provided in the enclosed TOR.

Interested candidates are invited to submit (a) CVs of the implementers and (b) a list of similar projects/work have been carried out with at least three contact numbers for the purpose of verification, by 1st Jun 2014 and to this email [email protected]. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted then.