Vietnamese scallop exports have become a presence that Japanese seafood buyers cannot ignore. According to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), scallop export value in 2025 was about 66 million dollars, up 49% from 44 million dollars the year before. The momentum accelerated further into 2026, with 18.1 million dollars in the first two months alone, a triple-digit 166% year-on-year growth. And the largest buyer is not the US but Japan. This change, in which Vietnam has started moving not as a "production area" for scallops but as a "processing and transshipment hub," is a cue for Japanese sourcing managers to redraw their map of supply sources.
Japan rises to the largest and fastest-growing export destination
Looking at 2025 scallop exports by country, Japan topped both in amount and growth rate at 14 million dollars (about 2.1 billion yen at 1 dollar = 150 yen), up 173% year on year. The US, long the largest market, was at 13.8 million dollars, with an increase of only 10%. Japan and the US stand nearly shoulder to shoulder, followed by Hong Kong at 9 million dollars (up 142%). Emerging catchments are swelling all at once too, with South Korea up 334%, the United Arab Emirates up 314%, and Canada up 167%.
The two-month period at the start of 2026 made this trend even more extreme. Canada up about 24-fold, Australia 11-fold, Japan about 5-fold, the US 2-fold — outsized growth lines up. The swings in the numbers are large because it is on a single-month basis, but the point is clear: scallops originating in Vietnam are spreading simultaneously to multiple advanced-country markets without relying on any one country.
| Market | 2025 export value | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 14 million dollars | +173% |
| US | 13.8 million dollars | +10% |
| Hong Kong | 9 million dollars | +142% |
| South Korea | - | +334% |
| UAE | - | +314% |
| Canada | - | +167% |
| Total | 66 million dollars | +49% |
Vietnam is not a "country that catches" but a "country that processes"
What to keep in mind here is that Vietnam has not become a major scallop production area. In VASEP's framing too, Vietnam is positioned as a hub increasingly embedded in the processing and re-export processes. Its role differs from Hokkaido and Aomori, which farm raw scallops on a large scale. The reality is closer to its raising its presence as a "transshipment and processing node" that handles labor-intensive work such as shucking, trimming, and freezing, and sends the product out to each country from there.
What underpins this structure is a move by the supply side, Japan itself. As one of the world's leading scallop-supplying countries, Japan is squeezing shipments to China and redirecting that volume to other markets. If raw material looking for a destination links up with Vietnamese factories that can process at lower labor costs, a cycle emerges in which Japanese raw scallops are processed in Vietnam and come back to each country, including Japan. The fact that Japan became the largest buyer of Vietnamese scallops is naturally seen as reflecting one end of this processing round trip. The overall picture of Vietnamese seafood and its relation to Japanese procurement is also organized in the composition of Vietnam's US$5.8 billion seafood exports and the sleeper opportunity of processing.
What Japanese sourcing managers should read from this
More than the flashiness of the numbers, what has meaning for procurement practice is that "a supply line is added." Scallops are an item with large price swings and production-area risk, and if a domestic production area is hit by poor catches or price spikes, the procurement plan collapses at once. If processed goods via Vietnam come to circulate stably, you can arrange the raw-scallop production area and the processing location separately. The idea of filling the off-season of domestic raw material with a Vietnamese processing line takes on reality.
On the other hand, a processing hub also carries the weakness that "where the scallop was caught" becomes hard to see. The more transshipment and re-export are involved, the heavier proof of the raw material's country of origin and traceability become as confirmation items for the procurement side. When sourcing, you want to confirm the processing location (Vietnam) and the raw material's country of origin separately, and pin down first whether documents that withstand Japan's food labeling are in order. How Japanese procurement moves as Vietnam advances its China shift in shrimp and white fish also overlaps with the points in Vietnamese seafood's China shift and Japanese procurement.
A step-up in processing capacity decides the quality of supply
What supports the growth of scallops on the Vietnamese side is the existing seafood-processing infrastructure. The freezing and primary-processing equipment and workforce built up with shrimp and pangasius can be diverted to scallop processing as is. The expansion of scallop processing is positioned within the same flow as the move of the largest shrimp maker strengthening supply to Japan with a new factory. As processing capacity rises, the center of gravity shifts from mere transshipment to the export of value-added products, and for Japanese buyers the room to "specify a standard and have it made" widens. The direction of capital investment can be gauged from Minh Phu's new factory in Ca Mau.
However, much of the triple-digit growth is a multiplier rise in small-amount markets, and the absolute amounts are still not large. Even for Japan it is on the order of 14 million dollars, a complementary position seen from domestic distribution volume. Rather than piling up inventory on excessive expectations, the realistic stance is to accumulate trial deals while assessing processing quality and origin confirmation, and to raise it as one of the supply sources.
Summary: how to try a new supply source
The surge in Vietnamese scallops is not a production-area growth story but the result of the behind-the-scenes role of processing and transshipment being built into the restructuring of the global supply network. The practical benefit for Japanese sourcing managers is that an option to arrange the processing location and the raw-material origin separately is added to scallop procurement, which tends to concentrate on domestic production areas. First confirm the three points of processing location, country of origin, and traceability documents, and start by gauging the stability and quality of the Vietnamese processing line through small trial deals. Rather than riding the momentum of the numbers, assessing which process of the supply network the counterpart handles is the premise for making use of this new sourcing destination.
