Stevia Corp. Breaks Ground on New Vietnam Facility Aimed at Commercial Scale Research

The facility will encompass 10 Ha designated for R&D, propagation of mother plants, and trial plots for inter/multi-cropping. The land is leased from a 1,000 Ha cooperative which will also make in excess of 100 Ha available for co-op members to undertake stevia trials.

Jan 25 2012 --- Stevia Corp., a farm management company focused on the economic development of stevia, the fastest growing product in the alternative sweetener sector, is pleased to announce it has broken ground for an all new research facility in Vinh Phuc province of Vietnam.

Vinh Phuc province is located 1 1/2 hours northwest of Hanoi and within 1 to 2 hours of the recently announced government supported stevia projects in the region. The dedicated facility will complement the current cooperative research efforts with local institutes and partners and the location has been determined to be ideal for fostering cooperation and communications between all stakeholders in the project.

The facility will encompass 10 Ha designated for R&D, propagation of mother plants, and trial plots for inter/multi-cropping. The land is leased from a 1,000 Ha cooperative which will also make in excess of 100 Ha available for co-op members to undertake stevia trials. Plans for the facility effectively allows for operational tests of key aspects of the proposed business model intended for large scale commercialization planned for implementation in 2013.

Mr. George Blankenbaker, Stevia Corp. President, comments, "Working in conjunction with the regional and national governments we are moving quickly towards commercial activity. An endeavor such as ours includes numerous complex moving parts and as such we are very pleased to have the opportunity to refine and test not only our near term growing techniques, but our longer term commercial goals as well. The need to determine best practices in harvesting, processing and transporting stevia offers challenges we aim to work out in a scalable fashion, and this facility is a key step towards our eventual success. We are very pleased to report that Stevia Corp is breaking ground right now and we expect the facility to be operational and producing initial results as early as March of this year."