Vietnamese produce's 3.65-billion-dollar first half: why Japan's sourcing moves beyond fresh

Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Environment has revealed that fruit and vegetable exports in the first half of 2026 reached US$3.65 billion, up 17.8% year on year. Looking at the figures alone it is a steady upward climb, but what Japanese food buyers and import trading houses should read is not the total but the change in its content. Onto the conventional earners of fresh durian and banana, frozen and processed goods are steadily piling up, and the range of items that can go on Japanese shelves is widening. The precedent of Vietnamese products growing into Japanese staple ingredients has already happened many times in seafood, as with pangasius, which has taken hold as the white fish in conveyor-belt sushi. The same structure has begun to move in fruit and vegetables too.

First-half US$3.65 billion — the growth is supported by processing and item concentration

This rise is not a one-off rebound. First-quarter exports were US$1.527 billion, up 31.4% year on year. Subtracting from the first-half US$3.65 billion leaves about US$2.1 billion for the second quarter, so on a quarterly basis both fresh and processed goods are turning. However, the year-on-year growth rate slowed from 31.4% in the first quarter to 17.8% for the first half overall, so this level is not being held by volume momentum alone. The driver as an item is durian, which stands out as a single item with about US$562 million in January–May alone, up about 46% year on year. The export destination is still dominated by China, which absorbs roughly half of the total in one country.

Conversely, this very dependence on a single market, China, is also the Vietnamese side's biggest weak point. China-bound fresh durian has seen customs clearance halt and prices swing wildly with a single change in cadmium or quarantine standards. How to thin out the risk of a single market while growing exports — the 'diversification' the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment repeats means precisely an approach to high-unit-price markets, including Japan.

A shift from 'selling fresh' to 'processing and selling' is occurring

What is advancing behind the statistics is a break from the overemphasis on fresh produce. In full-year 2025, processed fruit and vegetable exports topped US$2 billion for the first time, recording US$2.06 billion, up about 42% year on year. The share of processed goods in total fruit and vegetable exports rose to about 24%, up a notch from about 20% the previous year. With processed coconut alone reaching US$362 million, the trend of adding value by working on raw material rather than shipping it as is appears in the figures.

This shift directly means more options for Japanese buyers. Fresh produce faces walls of freshness, quarantine and transport days, and both the items that can be handled and the shipping periods are limited. If processed forms such as frozen durian, dried fruit, puree and cut vegetables increase, the range of items that can be stably procured year-round widens. The move to erase the between-seasons gap itself is also advancing on the fruit side, with production-area investment that fills supply gaps with technology, such as a new longan variety on which flowers and fruit coexist, running in parallel.

The first half of 2026 by the numbers

The Japanese market is now skewed to 'three fresh items'

Keeping the current state for Japan in mind brings the location of the upside into view. Vietnam's fruit and vegetable exports to Japan in 2025 were about US$238 million, up about 18% from the previous year. However, the breakdown is leaning toward a fresh-produce 'select few,' with three items — chrysanthemum, banana and sweet potato — making up about 47% of the total.

Banana's presence in particular is large. Vietnamese bananas rank second by volume in the Japanese market after the Philippines and Ecuador, and in July 2025 there were phases when the volume bound for the Tokyo area grew to more than twice the same period a year earlier. Within Vietnam, banana cultivation area has reached 161,000 ha, exporting to about 70 countries, with a target to raise it from the current roughly US$419 million to the US$1 billion scale. The track record built with fresh bananas becomes the foundation of trust for putting subsequent processed goods onto Japanese distribution.

Three meanings for Japanese procurement

Bringing these first-half figures close to the Japanese import and purchasing front, the meaning can be organized into three points.

First, The rising share of processed goods opens up procurement room 'beyond fresh produce.' Current exports to Japan have a fresh-centered composition of chrysanthemum, banana and sweet potato, but across Vietnam as a whole the share of frozen and processed goods has risen to 24%. Forms such as frozen durian, dried fruit, puree and cut-and-boiled vegetables are less constrained by freshness and easy to assemble year-round as raw material for food service, prepared meals and private-brand development. If Japanese buyers evaluate production areas only within the fresh-produce frame, they will miss this expansion. In seafood there is the example of top shrimp producer Minh Phu, which rewrote Japan's procurement map through processing investment, and in fruit and vegetables too, how a counterpart is seen changes with 'raw material or processed goods.'

Second, The track record built with banana becomes a negotiating lever for introducing processed goods. Fresh bananas, already established at No. 2 by volume in Japan, are an item in which quality, logistics and volume trust has been proven to a certain degree. If the same production area and the same export company propose dried bananas or banana puree, verification costs are lower than evaluating an unknown production area from scratch. The thinking of using existing fresh-produce trade as a thread to widen the doorway for processed goods becomes effective.

Third, As a rebound from China dependence, Japan has become a 'market being courted.' The structure in which China accounts for about half of export value means that, for the Vietnamese side, the need to diversify grows year by year. That the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment lists expanding market access in the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia as negotiation themes is an expression of this, and Japan is positioned as a target to go after. From the buyer's standpoint, a phase in which the production-area side has a motive to diversify is also a window in which it is easier to pin down terms on price, volume and quality assurance.

Main indicators for procurement decisions

Conclusion — move by watching the 'processing share,' not the 'total'

The US$3.65 billion figure for the first half of 2026 is not merely good-news for Japanese buyers. Breaking down its content, one can read that Vietnamese fruit and vegetables, once skewed to fresh produce, have shifted their center of gravity to processing and entered a transition in which the range of items on Japanese shelves is widening. Three things should be checked next. Whether the export companies you deal with, or candidate ones, have frozen and processing lines. Which processed goods other than chrysanthemum, banana and sweet potato are at a stage able to pass Japan's quarantine and standards. And how the circumstances of the production-area side wanting to thin out China dependence can be reflected in your own procurement terms. Rather than watching the growth of the total, following the change in processing share and item composition each quarter is far more effective for practical decision-making.

Sources

• Xuất khẩu rau quả bền vững từ chuỗi giá trị（VietnamPlus）
• Vietnam’s fruit, vegetable exports up nearly 18% in H1（Vietnam+）
• Fruit, vegetable exports rise 17.8% in H1（VnExpress International）
• Vietnam’s processed fruit, vegetable exports top 2 bln USD for 1st time（Xinhua）
• Vietnam's 2025 fruit and vegetable export value was a record-high US$8.56 billion (Access Online)