HCMC – The Post Entry Quarantine Center 2, under the Plant Protection Department, said rambutan exports to the U.S. surged strongly on the days before the Lunar New Year holiday, with 9-10 containers exported every day.
Nguyen Huu Dat, director of the center, said this was the record of the recent three weeks. Although rambutan was licensed for export to the U.S. over a year ago, not until November last year were the two sample shipments successfully sent stateside.
Thereafter, the amount of orders for rambutan has been shooting up, from 2-4 containers to 20 containers per week, before hitting the record of 9-10 containers a day now.
As rambutan is well received in the U.S. market, some 7-8 enterprises are attracted to join the export of this kind of fruit, said Dat. In addition, though 100% of export rambutan must be tested for plant protection drug residues and other criteria under the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act, no shipment of Vietnam has failed to meet the testing requirements.
Nguyen Thi Hong Thu, director of the fruit export company Chanh Thu in Ben Tre, said the Vietnamese fruits do not have to compete with the products of other countries now given the current off-season harvest. Therefore, local rambutan is strongly consumed, to the point that the output does not satisfy the orders.
Before recording such an achievement, Vietnamese rambutan had been in the waiting for long as it failed to compete with rambutan of South American countries. The price of local rambutan exported via airway was US$6.7 per kilo, completely defeated by South American rambutan which was sold at US$3 a kilo.
However, Vietnamese rambutan is now sold at over US$7 per kilo given the absence of its competitors.
