Food processing

Vinh Hoan's ASC-certified prepared pangasius product "Cured Panga Croquette" took the top award at Seafood Excellence Asia 2026. We lay out its significance from the angle of a white-fish substitute for Japan's foodservice and ready-meal sectors.

The major dried-fruit company Nafoods integrated 10 group companies into SAP S/4HANA, and first-half net profit nearly doubled. Its second freeze-drying plant in Long An also came online. We have summarized it from the viewpoint of Japanese food buyers choosing suppliers.

Vietnam's durian exports reached US$1.47 billion in January to July 2026, but the value is skewed toward fresh fruit, with frozen stuck at only about 20% of the fresh-fruit level. We unpack the room for Japan to fill the thinness of processing and branding through processing and OEM supply.

Vietnamese pangasius exports to Japan are expanding from mainly frozen fillets to seasoned and ready-to-eat processed products. Using VASEP's categories, the 2025 export value, and Kura Sushi's adoption as clues, we lay out the supply conditions Japanese buyers should grasp and the room in ready-to-eat and aging-population demand.

A twenty-something in Thanh Hoa province came ashore and revived, through D2C, a fish sauce aged 2–4 years in 240 ceramic jars. We examine its implications for Japanese seasoning and OEM sourcing.

Lao Cai province certified 58 products as OCOP in its first batch of 2026. Of these, 14 products, including instant menma (seasoned bamboo shoots), were raised to four stars, with ISO 22000 as a condition. We read the implications for Japan's sourcing of menma and wild vegetables.

The wholesale price of pineapple in north-central Vietnam has hit a record high of 19 million dong per tonne. We unpack DOVECO's contract farming, which absorbed the April-May price crash through floor-price guarantees and flowering adjustment, from a Japanese sourcing perspective.

Ducks usually bring to mind flocks on ponds and waterways, but in Nghe An province in central Vietnam, a farmer has emerged who runs 60,000 birds without using any open water at all. It is operated by Dinh No Phu Quy, born in 1992. The shed-raised duck business he started in 2021, after deducting expenses, earns a year...

A cheap freshwater snail that children pick up at the edge of the rice fields is being transformed into an herb-prepared processed product and shipped to South Korea. What Nguyen Huu Nhon (34), a farmer in Lam Dong province in southern Vietnam, has built is not merely a farming business. A young man who graduated from law school takes a snail worth next to nothing for raw consumption and processes it...

In Ea Sup, Dak Lak province in Vietnam's Central Highlands, on poor sandy soil that dries white in the dry season, the woman farmer Nguyen Thi Bich earns annual sales of 3.6 ty dong (3.6 billion dong, about 20.9 million yen at roughly 58 yen per 10,000 dong) from two hectares of guava and pomelo...