Practice of exporting freezing shrimps at hanoi seaproducts import and export jsc

 FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY 
FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 
 --------***--------- 
 INTERNSHIP ACTIVITY LOG 
PRACTICE OF EXPORTING FREEZING SHRIMPS 
 AT HANOI SEAPRODUCTS IMPORT AND 
 EXPORT JSC. 
 Full name : Nguyễn Thị Hoa 
 Student ID : 1111150153 
 Class : A30 (High – quality 
 program) 
 Instructor : Cao Thị Hồng Vinh (MA) 
 Hanoi, July 2014 2 
Before Internship: Changing 
In the first place, I intended to do internship in my current company where I am 
working as a teaching assistant. But then I changed my mind because it is an 
educational company. I decided to do internship in an import-export company as 
my major in university. 
However, it was too late for applying into any company. Then I had the idea of 
coming directly to an import-export company in Huynh Thuc Khang Street where 
I often passed by on the way to school. 
It was a big and classic company with not very large working rooms. It is the 
head office of the company. The products are processed in factories located in 
other places. I felt strange and scary. I went to administrative and organizational 
department asking for doing internship. But they said that they don’t need 
students. Then I went to other department but they all show unwelcome attitude. I 
thought I should give up and come back to my current working company, but 
where my report goes to? I believed that if I show my attempt, they would accept 
me. And finally it did happen when I went directly to Vice Director of the 
company asking for permission. He asked me two times that how I knew about 
his company and I told him the truth that it is on the way to my university, and 
asked who introduced me to this company, I said no one. Then he gave me 
permission and I am allowed to come to his company as an assistant in import-
export trading department 2 from July 7th . 
 3 
1. Week 1 (07/07 – 13/07) 
 Targets in the first week (7/7 – 13/7) 
- Learn about the history, business area, business scale of the company 
- Make friends with staff of the company 
- Learn about the supplier of the company 
- Learn about the customers, how to get new customers and maintain relationship 
with current customers. 
- Investigate the document set and make comparisons with theory. 
 Week 1 (07/07 – 13/07) 
 Date Content 
 Met company’s staff 
 Met Director again 
07/07/2014 
 Mr.Cuong is responsible for instructing me. He introduced briefly 
 about Seaprodex Hanoi for me. 
 Came early to do cleaning and prepare water 
 Read documents about Seaprodex Hanoi, the establishment year as a 
 separate legal entity. At first, it was a part of Seaprodex Vietnam. 
 Then, due to the increasing scale, it was separated as another 
 company with more than half of the capital is from Seaprodex 
09/07/2014 
 Vietnam. Read documents about main business areas and main 
 suppliers of the company. 
 Looked into the way other people working, helped them to get 
 documents from photocopy 
 Knew how to use printer, photocopier and fax machine. 
10/07/2014 Saw the real documents set, compared with the theories learned at 4 
 school. 
 Had lunch with other people in the company and had closer 
 relationship with them 
 Read documents about the company in the recent years. 
 Gains and Experiences 
- Reached the target of brief understanding of the company 
- Knew almost all people in Seaprodex and began to understand business culture. 
In Seaprodex, there are three import-export trading departments. Department 
number 1 and department 2 are responsible for exporting transactions while 
department number 3 is responsible for importing transactions. Department 1 has 
21 people, department 2 where I did internship just has 6 people and the 
department 3 has 8 people. The head of department 2 is Ms. Son. She has more 
than 30 years in doing international business. However, she did not always take 
care of the daily transaction but the other staff. She stayed in the room and kept 
working. She was quite busy calling and answering the phone. I observed her and 
other people in the room working. There were a lot of phone calls coming. It 
seemed that everybody was busy. But I like that because it was like a professional 
working environment! She often asks for advice of Ms.Hai who also has long 
experience in this area. Those two women often take care of the assignments from 
managers, for example the situation of workers and procession in Xuan Thuy 
factory, than daily transactions. Mr.Cuong, Mr.Manh and Mr. Long and Ms.Lan 
are responsible for those transactions, documents and other stuff. 
Administrative organizational department has four people. This department, I 
think, is very bureaucratic. I knew it because in the last days interning there when 
I need to ask for some documents. 
Mr.Le Van Toan who allowed me to do internship there is the most admirable 
person. He is not always in his room but whenever I saw him, he always does 5 
“something with papers”, not as some other people. I talked to him sometimes. 
Although he is director of Seaprodex Hanoi, he has never neglected me or 
showed any signals that made me feel sad and separate. Sometimes, people refuse 
to do if they do not have direct benefits. And I don’t know any of them before, it 
happened to me. 
From this internship, I realized how important relationship is in Vietnam. 
- Knew the customs formalities document set, document set to get money from 
the bank: its contents and made comparisons. 
The document set is relatively similar to what I have learned at school except the 
export license and some special documents for exporting seafood because all 
export-import companies have to get the export-import licenses when they 
registered for establishment. Then they don’t need to get it anymore except they 
want to expand their export-import products. About the special documents, they 
are health certificate and microbiological report and analysis issued by 
NAFIQAD. Seaprodex often has products analyzed by “Phòng thử nghiệm Trạm 
kiểm định chất lượng Nông lâm thủy sản – Chi cục Quản lý Chất lượng Nông lâm 
sản và Thủy sản Hà Nội”. But I am not allowed to go there. 
- Knew how to scan documents. 
- Have not had thorough investigation on the Contract 
2. Week 2 (14/07/2014 -21/07/2014) 
 Targets in Week 2 
- Investigate types of Contract 
- Well complete the tasks assigned 6 
- Continue learning fax machine and photocopier 
- Continue learning business culture here 
 Week 2 (14/07/2014 -21/07/2014) 
 Date Content 
 Investigated types of Contract 
 14/07/2014 
 Continued learning how to use fax machine and photocopier 
 Arranged bills of Seaprodex (electricity bill, water bill, internet 
 bill, guess bill ) according to time from the beginning of the 
 year to present 
 15/07/2014 
 I was instructed to fill in the figures of the above bills to 
 software iHTKK (software helping announcing tax through the 
 Internet 
 Photo documents 
 Check email of Seaprodex 
 16/07/2014 
 VAT bill and (normal bill), know what expense is considered as 
 the cost of business, what is not 
 17/07/2014- Days off (summer vacation) 
 21/07/2014 
 Gains and Experiences 
- Observing people working for a while, I went taking out one of the book – file 
from the shelf and studied by myself as I did the first day at work. Mr. Cuong 
said to me that I could ask her anything I felt foggy on and that I had to research 
by myself for some few days because at the moment, he was busy solving some 
problems of the company. He promised to share with me her professional 
experience later on. The documents I read is some past Contract of the company, 
which help me understand main articles in Contracts. 7 
Sometimes, I asked if I could do anything to help them but they said it was OK, 
and that they could manage their workload on their own and that they could not 
share their workload with me because I were not able to do it. I am not able to go 
too far from Hanoi while the main factory of the company is located in Nam Dinh 
province. 
- Know the differences between Principle Contract and Economic Contract 
which is the former is directive, basically while the latter is established based the 
former and more detailed. 
- Know the differences between international contract, renting contract, 
warehouse renting contract, foreign contract and domestic contract. 
- Know what expense is considered as the cost of business, what is not 
- Understand partly the difficulties of the company when solving problems or 
completing issuing related to tax, administrative procedures . 
- Know the content which is often discussed through email between companies, 
its style and words 
- Know how to use photocopy and fax machine 
3. Week 3 (21/07/2014 -26/07/2014) 
 Targets in Week 3 
- Understanding customers, suppliers 
- Observe the negotiation skills and maintaining relationship with partners 
- Well complete tasks assigned 
 Week 3 (21/07/2014 -27/07/2014) 8 
 Date Content 
 Knew what an enquiry likes 
21/07/2014 Make draft of the offer in English to customers in China, Japan, 
 USA, . 
23/07/2014 Asked for some documents to write report 
25/07/2014 Learn how to use ECUS (partly) 
 Gains and Experiences 
- Know how to offer products, what an enquiry looks like 
The follow is an example of an quiry from an importer from South Korea 
“We are an importer from South Korea. We often import seafood. Currently, we 
are willing to import shrimp with the following detailed information: 
1. One layer freezing shrimp (white nippers) 
Size Length of tray Net weight Tray 
S 50 pcs 6.1-6.5 140g 
M 50 pcs 6.6-7.0 160g 
L 30 pcs 7.1-7.5 120g 
Packaging: 20 trays/carton 
2. White shrimp (Vannamei shrimp) 
Packaging: 290g net weight (300g gross weight) 
Please inform us about the availability of those products and the price list. We are 
glad to do business with you. Thank you!” 
About customers, they are often from Japan, USA, South Korea and China. 
Japanese customers often make payment by L/C and their quality investigation is 
very clear while USA customers often make payment by T/T and their quality 
investigation is so strict and normally not as clear as Japanese customers. Doing 9 
business with USA customers is very risky. Most transactions are made by L/C. 
However, in the internship report I talked about a consignment to USA which is 
made by T/T. 
 - Know how ECUS works. Mr. Cuong sent me an excel file recording export 
transactions from 2008 to 2011, in which I could find the some information like 
the name of the commodity, Invoice Number, Quantity, Shipment date, Custom 
Declaration Number and Payment value. He also gave me an export – log in 
which he notes the name of the commodity, quantity, name of supplier, name of 
forwarder, Invoice date, Invoice number, Custom Declaration number, Estimated 
Time of Departure, Estimated Time of Arrival, Document Set Number and Book 
– file Number. It was such a hard task as after listing all kinds of commodities 
exported by Seaproducts Hanoi, I had to find the exact HS code for each 
commodity. To do this, I had to look for the Customs Declaration Number in the 
excel file, then search for the corresponding Document Set number and Book – 
file Number in the import – log. After that, I take out that document set from that 
book – file to find the customs declaration, in which the HS code of the 
commodity is specified. It took me the whole day to do that! Finding the tariff 
rate for each commodity is simpler. 
4. Week 4 (28/07/2014 – 2/8/2014) 
 Targets in Week 4 
- Know about Health Certificate for exporting sea products 
- Finish the report 
 10 
 Week 4 (28/07/2014 – 2/8/2014) 
 Date Content 
28/07/2014 Check errors in Export Contract in English and Vietnamese 
 See the Health Certificate and the was explained how to get this 
30/07/2014 
 Certificate 
 Photo and scan documents 
 Get the confirmation of Seaprodex Hanoi for the report 
02/08/2014 
 Parties with Mr.Cuong and the other staff in Import-Export Trading 
 Department 2. 
 Gains and Experiences 
 - Know the process of export sea products in Seaprodex Hanoi. This week, 
Mr.Cuong was still busy but he was not as busy as usual. He shared with me his 
professional experience. He said the field of import – export was not as difficult 
as I had thought. When he was a student, his major was accounting, not 
international trade or anything similar to that. When he graduated, he worked as 
an accountant at Seaprodex Hanoi just for a short time before switching to the 
Import – Export – Trading department. At his early time working in this 
department, he did not know anything about import and export. All he has done is 
self studying and accumulating his own experience. I was really admired him as 
he learnt everything by himself with no training from anyone. He said that when 
submitting the documents to the Custom or inspection company or any other 
government authorities to do any formalities, if they required submitting other 
documents to complete the procedure, then we have to contact the person/ 
organization that issues these documents to ask for the lacking documents. The 
mechanism is quite simple. He reassured me that the procedure for import and 
export was not very difficult, just a little complication in preparing the documents.