Vietnam's durian export value grew more than 20-fold in four years, from US$177.7 million in 2021 to roughly US$3.85 billion in 2025. In 2026 too, at US$1.47 billion for January–July, up 44.1% year on year, the growth continues. However, opening up the inside of the amount reveals a structure dependent on fresh-fruit shipments, with a thin layer of frozen, processing, and brand. For Japanese farm-product buyers, this thinness is a sourcing risk and, at the same time, a gap they can engage with through processing and OEM supply.
US$1.47 billion in seven months: the content of exports is skewed to fresh fruit
January–July 2026 durian exports were US$1.47 billion. Of this, exports to China were US$1.38 billion, up 49.6% year on year, with a market share exceeding 90%. Durian alone accounts for about 45% of Vietnam's fruit and vegetable exports. The amount is piling up, but most of it is supported by a structure that flows fresh fruit to a single market. The combination of buyers concentrated in one pole, with room-temperature fresh fruit as the mainstay, means that the initiative in price negotiations is unlikely to remain with the region side.
Export volume is level with Thailand, eyeing the world's top spot
The 2026 planted area is about 200,000 hectares, of which 129,500 hectares enter the harvest period, with output projected at roughly 2.08 million tonnes. Vietnam is level with Thailand in durian export volume and has reached a position eyeing the world's top spot. While it is achieving volume expansion, the next challenge—how to raise unit prices—remains unresolved.
Frozen tops out just 20% above fresh fruit; prices do not build up
Frozen durian export volume increased roughly 20-fold, from about 4,600 tonnes in 2024 to over 91,000 tonnes in 2025. First-quarter 2026 durian exports were about US$221.7 million, up 230% year on year, with much of the growth led by frozen. Yet the average unit price is about US$4,302 per tonne—just over 20% higher year on year, and only 18–22% above fresh fruit. Even freezing to extend shelf life and shipping distance, the markup tops out at around 20%. Freezing itself is preservation, not processing, and unless one steps into brand and application, the unit price does not break away from the extension line of fresh fruit. The phase in which the China-bound wholesale price was pushed down in inverse proportion to increased volume The paradox of the wholesale price halving in China even with exports up 30%, and the need for market diversification had already surfaced as this.
In the regions, the levels of sorting, ripening, and storage are not aligned
Vietnamese materials, too, acknowledge that preservation and processing technology is "not synchronized." The reality is skewed toward refrigeration and freezing and fresh-fruit export, with loose linkage from production to collection, primary processing, processing, and consumption, and no established mechanism for sharing responsibility and profit. If sorting criteria and ripeness management vary from region to region, quality swings even within the same lot, and the yield as processing raw material cannot be read. Conversely, a region that can align quality at the field level sees its evaluation jump. In Dak Lak, Farmers who raised grade A to 80% through fertilization design and are bought at VND 62,000 per kilo have emerged, and the leveling of quality is beginning to tie directly to price.
Malaysia sells Musang King as a variety brand
A point of comparison is Malaysia. It has turned the variety name Musang King itself into a brand, extended it into frozen paste, freeze-dried, and vacuum-packed pulp, and secured a high price band with Halal and HACCP certification and a 12-month shelf life as its weapons. What it sells is not the fruit but the variety's story and the processing form. Vietnam's Ri6 and Monthong surpass it in volume, but their region names and variety names have not grown into brands that stay in buyers' memory. The current standing—leading in volume, lagging in unit price and brand—clearly shows here.
What Japan can work with is the gap in processing and OEM
This structure creates a gap that is easy for Japanese food makers to enter. What Vietnam is thin on is three things—processing technology, quality control, and application development—all of which overlap with domains the Japanese side has built up. Rather than just buying fresh fruit, one can envisage a way of engaging in which frozen pulp is received as raw material for confectionery, ice making, and baking, and assembled via OEM into processed goods of one's own brand or a private brand. By bringing Japanese standards into the design of primary processing close to the region, you can hold both yield and safety while jointly building the foundation for price negotiations.
Widening applications with dried, paste, and frozen raw material
The exit for processing is not fresh fruit alone. By changing form into dried, paste or puree, and commercial IQF pulp, you can supply year-round, free of the constraints of season and freshness. Japan has know-how in blending, drying, and filling cultivated through dried-fruit and fruit-processing OEM, and connecting this to the region's primary processing lets you design the application from the raw-material stage. The flow of linking dried fruit to region codes and carrying it to Japan The case of carrying Dong Thap's dried mango to Japan with 353 region codes has shown the way first. The path that worked for mango can also be applied to durian, which combines frozen and dried.
Region codes and inspection systems become the premise of sourcing
Before teaming up on processing, traceability becomes the entrance to sourcing. Vietnam has 1,599 export-approved cultivation-area codes and 281 packing facilities, and on August 14, 2026, 401 additional cultivation areas and 166 facilities were approved. Inspection labs have been developed to a total of 52—13 government, 10 local, and 29 private. In July 2026, India opened its market to fresh fruit, widening the options for exits too. If Japanese buyers step into processing and OEM, they will put in place a procedure of first confirming which region code and facility a lot passed through and tying it to the inspection system in the contract.
Japanese equipment and technology enter the value-chain renewal
The Vietnamese side has set out a shift "from a mindset of responding after a problem arises to a mindset of actively preparing early and far ahead." The substance of the renewal it has set out is investment in cold chains, freezing lines, quality control, and the digitalization of the supply chain—all domains where Japanese equipment and technology, and OEM arrangements, can enter. A region eyeing the world's top spot in volume is hitting the next wall of unit price and brand. Whether Japan can engage in the process of clearing that wall not as a buyer of fruit but as a joint processing operator is the choice open to the Japanese side.
References:
VietnamPlus, "Sau rieng Viet Nam: tu trai ngot xuat khau den bai toan nang tam chuoi gia tri" (September 3, 2026)
VietnamNet「Vietnam poised to overtake Thailand as world’s largest durian exporter」
FreshPlaza「Vietnam aims for 2.08 million tons of durian in 2026」
FreshPlaza「Vietnamese durian exports rise 230% on frozen durian demand」
