The owner of one of Vietnam’s biggest rice exporters, Nguyen Quang Hoa, can only watch as 500 containers of sticky rice stranded in a port container yard for a month slowly degrades.
He’s furloughed 400 factory workers, but his losses keep growing. If he doesn’t ship the 12,500 tons of rice soon, he’s worried his Chinese clients will reject it, and his company will be forced to default on $13 million in bank loans.
"We may have to throw away all the sticky rice, and spend more money getting rid of it,” said Hoa, director and founder of Duong Vu Co. "My company is teetering on the edge of collapse.”