Certification & standards

Sojitz acquired all shares of SFIH on October 2, 2026, making the UK's NESI a consolidated subsidiary. We lay out, from the breakdown of US$43 million in exports to the UK, how joint procurement and certification requirements for UK mass retailers will affect negotiations over Vietnamese white fish.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 2,665 of the 2,803 fishing boats measuring 12 m or more in length have finished installing the electronic catch log (eCDT) on their devices. As of September 24, the adoption rate was 95%. The city's Department of Agriculture and Environment released the figure, and the Nong nghiep va Moi truong newspaper reported it on September 25. Replacing paper logs, the system, boat by boat and voyage by voyage,...

Son La province in northern Vietnam has begun a full review of all the coffee gardens in the province. Over two days, September 23 and 24, the provincial Department of Agriculture and Environment held meetings to inventory coffee sitting on forestry land and to build cultivation-plot data in line with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Those taking part were coffee...

On September 21, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) released the content of a new-standard training session it held jointly with the ASC (Aquaculture Stewardship Council) in Can Tho on September 15. The targets were farms, companies, and aquaculture-feed plants. What matters to Japanese buyers is that the scope of the audit does not stop inside the fence of the farming pond but, the feed...

The Hoa Le cooperative delivered about 400 kg of white-flesh dragon fruit to Vietnam Airlines' domestic routes for the first time. The basis the cooperative uses for in-flight supply was test results meeting export standards for markets such as Japan, Australia, and South Korea. We lay this out together with a supply scale said to reach 5,000 tonnes a year.

Dam Doi in Ca Mau province, together with Minh Phu, has built an ASC-certified black tiger shrimp farming zone of 268 households and 721 hectares. We lay out the points Japanese seafood buyers looking for certified raw material will want to check.

For Vietnamese coffee, EUDR-compliant lots trade at US$50 more per tonne. Some 35–40% of supply is compliant, and over 30% of the cultivated area holds sustainability certification. For Japanese roasters and buyers, we lay out the practicalities of how certification compliance ties directly to a price premium.

Tahara, an agricultural attache at the Japanese Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City, stated clearly that there is demand for Vietnamese products meeting environmental and green standards. For Vietnamese products, which rose to the fourth-largest supplier country in 2025, we interpret by item the traceability and environmental proof that will be asked for next.

Black pepper for the EU faces a wall of 565 pesticide-residue items. The Hoang Nguyen cooperative in Lam Dong has obtained organic (USDA, EU, JAS) certification on 195.6 of its 986 hectares and exports from them. A JAS-compliant growing region becomes, for Japanese sourcing, a raw material that does not get stopped at inspection.

The major feed company BioMar has obtained its first ASC feed certification among its Asia bases, at a joint-venture plant in Vinh Long province, Vietnam. We read how an international certification at the upstream of feed works as proof of traceability in sourcing shrimp and fish to Japan.