After a 6-year negotiation process and approval in 2022, in the early days of the calendar year 2023, the first batch of Vietnamese longans was officially exported to the Japanese market, becoming a fruit. 4th of our country is allowed to import into this top difficult market.
Vietnamese fresh longan sold at an overseas supermarket (Source: Internet)
On January 3, in Long An province, a Vietnamese enterprise started to officially export the first batch of 10 tons of fresh longan from our country to Japan. The longan variety selected for export is the Indo variety grown in Dong Thap and Vinh Long.
The first batch of 1-ton longan out of 10 tons will be shipped by air and is expected to be available at Japanese supermarkets after 4 days. After this shipment, the above enterprise said that it will continue to export from 70 to 100 tons of fresh longan per month to Japan by sea or by air.
To be able to export this batch of fresh longan to Japan, the enterprise has undergone many rigorous evaluation processes from the Japanese side. Finished products must not have chemical residues and must be issued with the planting area code and processing facility code by the competent authority.
In addition, unlike lychees, fresh longan for export needs to be cold treated at 1.3oC within 13 days before the date of shipment to eliminate harmful organisms as much as possible. After meeting the cold treatment standards, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will issue a phytosanitary certificate to confirm that the shipment is eligible for export. This is one of the decisive conditions for the Japanese side to accept the official import of our country’s longan and is closely monitored by Japanese experts.
Despite the rigorous evaluation process, the potential for exporting fruit to the Japanese market is huge. Japan spends up to 20 billion USD per year to import all kinds of fruits, while Vietnam accounts for less than 3% of that amount. Longan export shipments right from the early days of 2023 prove that Vietnamese fruits in general and our country’s longans have reached high quality, fully qualified for import into difficult and highly valuable markets.
