Palm sugar and fish sauce head to Australia with five stars: the raw-material map An Giang's OCOP draws

In An Giang province in southern Vietnam, local traditional foods such as palm sugar boiled by mountain people and fish sauce fermented on an island are obtaining the nation's highest rating, the "five-star OCOP," one after another and beginning to cross over to Australia and Europe. OCOP (One Commune One Product) is a grading system for regional products that Vietnam has advanced since 2018, a mechanism that makes quality and export suitability visible through the number of stars, from three to five. For those in charge of food OEM and raw-material sourcing in Japan, this number of stars a "yardstick of quality" that counts in selecting Vietnamese growing regions is becoming something usable as. This article organizes what has become five-star in An Giang and where it is selling, from the viewpoint of reverse-looking-up the growing region.

"Five stars" line up across palm sugar, fish sauce, and rice

The core of what An Giang disclosed this time is traditional foods entering the international market. The palm-sugar (mat thot not) brand "Palmania" of the Tri Ton district in the province's southwest had multiple forms—syrup, granular, and powder—certified as five-star OCOP, passing the national evaluation with an average score of over 92 points. Phu Quoc island's fish sauce "Huynh Khoa" has also obtained five stars for three products with differing nitrogen content (the degree that serves as an index of umami).

What the two have in common is that certification was the trigger for their sales channels to break out from domestic to overseas. Palmania made its first shipment to the Netherlands in July 2021, later expanded to Sweden and Finland, and now exports on a make-to-order basis to the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, and more. Huynh Khoa achieved its first shipment to Australia in June 2025 and plans to expand in both the US and Australian markets in 2026. Materials that were local family businesses have begun, within a few years of obtaining stars, to reach the shelves of cross-border e-commerce and overseas retail.

A provincial merger turned Phu Quoc fish sauce into "made in An Giang"

What cannot be left out in reading this story is the 2025 administrative reorganization. On July 1, 2025, Vietnam merged Kien Giang province into An Giang province, launching a new An Giang province. It is a "mega-province" of about 9,889 square kilometers, a population of about 4.95 million, and an administrative center in Rach Gia city, and Phu Quoc island, a renowned fish-sauce region, became a special zone under An Giang's direct control.

In other words, the group of products that have been called "Phu Quoc fish sauce" came, institutionally, to be lumped together as "An Giang province's specialty." Phu Quoc fish sauce is a pioneer of international standardization, obtaining Vietnam's first geographical indication (GI) in 2001 and, in 2012, the EU's protected designation of origin (PDO) for the first time as a Southeast Asian food. The palm sugar of the mountain side, the fish sauce of the sea side, and the rice of the Mekong were consolidated into one province's product list by the merger. Seen from the procurement side, this means that primary producers of differing character have come together under the same administrative window and the same certification ledger. the Haiphong case that pushed two fish-sauce products up to five stars—the same pattern is appearing in An Giang too, at a larger growing-region scale.

An Giang's OCOP in figures

Lining up the newborn An Giang province's OCOP certifications by star, a pyramid structure comes into view in which five stars is a narrow layer at the top and three stars form a thick base.

Comparing with the whole country makes its standing clear. Across Vietnam as of July 2025, there were 17,068 products with three stars or more and 9,195 certified entities, while national five-star products are limited to 126. An Giang's figure of 613 products is a top-tier growing-region scale nationally, and 14 five-star products works out to one province holding roughly 10% of the nation's 126. It is a state in which a treasure trove of traditional foods is being taken stock of as a system.

The makers' words and jobs on the ground

Obtaining stars ripples out not only to export track records but to local employment. Picking up the voices of those on the ground, you can see that the system is directly tied to livelihoods.

• Ho Van Mung, chairman of the An Giang People's Committee: "OCOP plays a particularly large role in raising rural workers' incomes and solving employment problems."
• Chau Ngoc Diu of the palm-sugar brand Palmania: as a Khmer woman, a pioneer who sent traditionally made palm sugar overseas. Its powder form received two stars at the UK's Great Taste Awards in 2020 and became Vietnam's first palm-sugar powder brand
• Nguyen Huynh Anh Khoa of the fish-sauce brand Huynh Khoa: quit a major company in Ho Chi Minh City in 2016 to return to the island and take over the three-generation family business. He increased the 50 fermentation barrels inherited from his parents to 210

In the Bay Nui (Seven Mountains) area, a palm-sugar region, the Ta Dinh agricultural cooperative creates about 50 jobs, 80% of them held by Khmer women. The daily wage is 250,000 to 300,000 dong, roughly 1,500 to 1,800 yen (at 10,000 dong ≈ 60 yen), bringing stable cash income to ethnic-minority women.

OCOP becomes a "primary-producer map" for Japanese food OEM

The advance of international standardization of traditional materials carries three practical meanings for raw-material sourcing on the Japanese side.

First, the number of stars lowers the cost of searching for primary producers—that is the point. Until now, with local traditional foods it was hard to see from outside who could make them, to what specification, and how much. OCOP's certification ledger discloses items, entities, stars, and locations linked together. Five stars, in many cases, comes with the acquisition of international standards such as GlobalGAP, HACCP, ISO, HALAL, and FDA on top of the national evaluation, and Japanese buyers can, using the "number of stars" as an entrance, reach export-ready primary producers by the shortest distance. A map that lets you reverse-look-up a growing region from an item name is taking shape.

Second, the provincial merger gave birth to a "one-stop growing region"—that is the point. Because candidate processing raw materials—palm sugar, fish sauce, and rice—were consolidated into the same An Giang province, a design to source fish sauce as a seasoning base, palm sugar as a sugar substitute, and rice as a main ingredient bundled within a single administrative window and logistics zone takes on reality. Raw materials that were negotiated across multiple provinces can now be completed within one province.

Third, a material with a "story" attached becomes a weapon for differentiation—that is the point. Backgrounds such as palm sugar boiled by Khmer women and island fish sauce protected by the EU's PDO become appeal material as-is in product planning for private brands (PB) and gifts. Vietnamese makers who sell materials with a story—likewise, raw materials that carry certification and provenance as a set make possible shelf-building that does not fight on unit price. Conversely, confirming this background at the sourcing stage governs the product value of the downstream process.

Main five-star items, their standards, and export destinations

Lining up An Giang's representative five-star items by standard and current export destination gives a starting point for sourcing consideration.

Huynh Khoa directs about 30% of its total output to bottled branded goods and supplies the rest for commercial use, and it is trying to widen its sales channels as far as tourism experiences that incorporate live-streamed selling on e-commerce and factory tours. That stable raw-material supply and retail expansion run at the same time is a reassuring factor when viewing it as a candidate for OEM raw material.

Summary: reverse-look-up the growing region from the number of stars

An Giang's OCOP depth of 613 products is not a mere regional-development figure. With the provincial merger, palm sugar, fish sauce, and rice gathered into one growing-region ledger, and five-star items have begun to line up on overseas shelves with international standards and export track records. For Japanese food OEM and raw-material buyers, this means a map that lets you reverse-look-up the primary producers of traditional materials from an item name is now in place. The next action to take is concrete: first decide the raw-material category you are after (fish sauce for seasonings, palm sugar for sugars), narrow down the corresponding entity and location in the OCOP five-star ledger, confirm whether it holds the standards your company requires such as GlobalGAP and HACCP, and then approach an entity with an export track record. The number of stars becomes the shortest clue pointing to the growing region's entrance.

Sources

• Đặc sản thốt nốt, thiên đường mắm, gạo An Giang lên đời nhờ chương trình OCOP（Dân Việt）
• Hanh trinh dua mat thot not tro thanh san pham OCOP 5 sao (An Giang province portal / Palmania)
• Chàng trai đưa nước mắm Huỳnh Khoa Phú Quốc đạt chuẩn OCOP 5 sao（Dân Việt）
• Phu Quoc fish sauce makers receive EU’s PDO certificate（Vietnam Government Portal）
• Hanoi to host Vietnam OCOP Festival 2025（VietnamPlus）