Vietnam Exports 28 Tons of Dragon Fruit in H1
As many as 16 shipments of dragon fruit, weighing 28 tons in total, arrived in the U.S. in the first six months this year, the Post Entry Plant Quarantine Center No. 2 reported.
Ten tons of the volume were shipped by sea, and the rest sent by air, the center said, adding that only five Vietnamese companies are now exporting dragon fruit to the U.S.
Dragon fruit exports to the U.S. ground to a halt in December last year when the Son Son Joint Stock Company suspended its dragon fruit irradiation service to carry out maintenance work on its equipment.
Son Son is the only company in Vietnam licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to irradiate fruit for the U.S. market.
Currently, dragon fruit imported from Vietnam is mostly bought by Americans of Vietnamese and Chinese origin for about US$11 per kilogram, compared to about VND12,000 (66 cents) a kilogram on the local market.
Dragon fruit, however, is not sold in U.S. supermarkets where the fruits could be sold for even higher prices.
Vietnam’s Department of Plant Protection is working through legal procedures to export fruits such as longan, lychee, rambutan, mangos, guavas, jack-fruit, star apple and mangosteen to the U.S.
Vietnamese firms hope the U.S. market will open to Vietnamese longans, lychees and rambutans by the end of this year. (Youth)
Vietnamese
