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"The crazy idea from years ago has now become a fabric that can be worn," Nam, 33, from central Nghe An province, says.
The fabric is the fruit of a five-year effort during which he was called "eccentric" for quitting his job as a machine design engineer in Japan with a salary of thousands of dollars a month to return home and start a business with what locals called trash.
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Workers load pineapple leaves onto a conveyor belt to extract pulp during the machine’s first day of operation in November 2022 in Nghe An. Photo courtesy of Nam |
Nam graduated from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology and worked for a company that partners Toyota.
While once drinking tequila, he was surprised to learn that Mexicans distill the agave plant for alcohol and extract fibers from the leaves to weave sacks and ropes.
The image of the agave with its long leaves made Nam immediately think of the pineapple plants in his hometown. He realized his hometown had over 50,000 hectares under pineapples that produce two million tons of leaves annually. They are simply burned, causing pollution. "In my eyes, that was money being burned," he says.
During Lunar New Year festival (Tet) in 2020, Nam returned to Vietnam, sought out old teachers, and dug up research topics on pineapple fiber. He and three associates then used spoons to scrape each leaf to find fibers. Realizing manual work was impossible, he returned to Japan, working while directing a group to build a fiber extraction machine. But the first semi-automatic machine, created in March 2020, was a failure: it rattled intensely, was unsafe and had low productivity.
The former mechatronics engineer then referenced global models to remake the machine from manual to automatic. In August 2022 he returned to Vietnam and started activating his plans.
On one November day the atmosphere in the workshop in the province was as tense as a guitar string with 15 people holding their breath watching a pineapple leaf get swallowed by the machine at one end. When the other end "spat" out long, shiny fibers, applause erupted.
The six-ton machine, which cost VND1.5 billion (US$57,000), was successful and managed to process 10-12 tons of leaves a day, helping reduce raw fiber production costs from VND100,000-160,000 per kg.
Not long afterward Nam created prototypes of the machine to send to manufacturers in Dien Bien, Dak Lak and Hau Giang provinces. But producing raw fiber was not the endgame.
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Dau Van Nam alongside various pineapple-based fiber, yarn, and fabric products in Hanoi, November 2025. Photo by VnExpress/ Phan Duong |
In the first three years the company managed to export only 50 kg to the Philippines. The raw pineapple fiber was stiff, resinous and incompatible with industrial cotton weaving lines.
The young engineer scoured Thailand, India and China, hunting for technology he could bring back and adapt.
By late 2023 he had successfully brought down the rough 80-micrometer fibers down to a cotton-like 25-30 micrometers. He thought victory was finally within reach. But he was wrong.
When he brought the soft, cotton-like tufts to the textile factory, he hit a wall. Industrial machines, accustomed to processing soft cotton, jammed immediately when fed the new material.
Dr. Tran Van Quyen, a consultant for The Woolmark Company, pointed out that the physical properties of pineapple fiber differed fundamentally from that of cotton. The team’s new objective was to find a way to process the fiber on traditional spinning systems.
Solving this puzzle took Nam another year. He and his associates practically lived on the factory floor, collaborating with veteran spinners. They dismantled the equipment, tweaking every clearance on the main shafts and needles. There were days when the roar of the machines was matched only by the heated debates between the young engineer and the seasoned mechanics.
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Nam collaborates with factories to convert pineapple fiber into yarn for weaving, November 2025. Photo by Phan Van Duc |
Early this autumn the final batch of "cottonized" pineapple fiber rolled off the line. "When I held that spool of thread, my tears just flowed," Nam says. "It was the realization of a youth spent on a journey that was as grueling as it was glorious."
Nam's pineapple fiber now boasts natural antibacterial properties and UV resistance and is fully biodegradable, features the global sustainable fashion industry covets.
His factory has secured four distribution partners, including major players in Japan and China. His goal for 2026 is to hit a production milestone of 100 tons per month.
Nam has often been asked why he left a "paradise" abroad for such a thorny road at home. He thinks of the pineapple leaf: left on the edge of the field, it remains waste forever. But if it endures being shredded, beaten, carded, and crushed, it transforms into silk.
"If young people don't dare to throw themselves into difficult work or get their hands dirty with the soil of their homeland, how will they ever know how resilient they truly are?"
A look at the steps involved in transforming pineapple leaves into fabric. Video by Ecofa
