Vietnam's pangasius (Vietnamese catfish) industry has begun steering from a race to pile on output toward earning from processing beyond the fillet. In the words of an industry figure carried by state media, the winning path is no longer the size of the farming operation but whether a player can hold the entire value chain from farming through processing to by-products. From a single leg of discount frozen fillets, to what lies beyond the fillet. For Japanese food buyers who find whole fresh fish harder to buy under a weak yen, this shift is material for rethinking procurement.
The industry declaration that set it off
With An Giang province, a major farming cluster, as the stage, the pangasius industry made its 'from volume to value' policy explicit. Fish that used to be exported almost entirely as frozen fillets is given added stages — preparation, seasoning, ready-to-cook — to raise the unit price per fish. At the same time, moves are advancing to develop the fat, skin, heads, and bones that were once discarded into fish oil, collagen, gelatin, and fishmeal. The industry's self-perception is that, on a foundation of certifications such as VietGAP, GlobalGAP, and ASC, it has entered a stage of building quality that will pass in demanding markets such as the US, EU, China, and Colombia.
The reality of 'still reliant on fillets,' seen in the numbers
The declaration is forward-looking, but the reality of the export structure still has frozen fillets in the lead. Cross-referencing statistics from the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), pangasius exports in January to November 2025 exceeded US$2 billion, up about 9% year on year. A forecast of around US$2.3 billion for full-year 2026 has also appeared. However, as shown below, the composition is still heavily skewed toward frozen fillets.
| Category | Export value, January to November 2025 | Year on year |
|---|---|---|
| Frozen fillets (HS0304) | About US$1.6 billion | ＋11％ |
| Prepared and processed products (HS16) | About US$48 million | ＋13％ |
Processed products outpace fillets on growth rate, but the value is an order of magnitude apart. Prepared and processed products still account for only a few percent of total exports, and an honest reading is that the industry's banner of 'value creation' is only just at the entrance. Flipped around, it is also an immature market with large room to grow.
Why it matters for Japanese procurement
This shift matters to Japan because Japan's pangasius demand leans not toward cheap whole fish but toward labor-intensive processed products. As whitefish on conveyor-belt sushi and as fry portions for restaurant chains, pangasius has already become a staple in Japan. That history is the staple-making story that Kura Sushi's whitefish was catfish covered in detail there, but what worked its way onto Japan's table was less the fillet itself than a standardized, cooking-ready form.
In other words, the beyond the fillet that Vietnam is pursuing overlaps with the territory Japanese buyers wanted all along. The process of buying whole fish and breaking it into fillets domestically is, amid a weak yen and labor shortage, becoming less worthwhile year by year. The pattern in which Japan's procurement depth lies precisely in value-added products such as peeled shrimp, fillets, and heat-processed goods — where the labor can be moved to the source — is the composition of Vietnam's US$5.8 billion seafood exports and the sleeper opportunity of processing as seen there as well. The pangasius industry's appetite for higher prices is, for Japan, less a price increase than a story of a contractor for the process is growing.
The whitefish procurement map is shifting
The pangasius processing shift is not happening in isolation. Vietnamese seafood companies are also moving into end-to-end processing of tilapia as a whitefish alongside pangasius, and the move in which Vietnamese tilapia, through end-to-end plants, is rewriting the options for whitefish procurement seen together, shows that the locally processed supply sources Japanese whitefish buyers can choose from are steadily increasing. As pangasius shifts its weight downstream toward ready-to-cook and tilapia toward fillet processing, Japanese import managers can add to their combinations of species and processing level.
What Japanese buyers can do now
In practice, first take stock of whether a counterpart stops at frozen fillets or can handle seasoning, ready-to-cook, and portion processing. Plants that handle HS16 processed products are still a minority, and pinning this down early, together with whether they hold certifications such as ASC, works in your favor when supply thins. By-product collagen and gelatin also draw inquiries as food and supplement ingredients outside seafood, and watching only whitefish fillets means missing them. Shifting the viewpoint from buying fillets to procuring the whole process is what pays off in seafood sourcing under a weak yen.
