{"id":1362,"date":"2026-07-20T23:34:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/?post_type=industry_news&p=1362"},"modified":"2026-07-20T23:34:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:34:28","slug":"snail-herb-korea","status":"publish","type":"industry_news","link":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/industry_news\/snail-herb-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"A law graduate earns 1.18 million yen a day from sea snails, shipping herb-prepared snails to South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cheap freshwater snails that children pick up at the edge of rice paddies are being turned into herbal-style processed goods and sent to South Korea. What Nguyen Huu Nhon (34), a farmer in Lam Dong Province in southern Vietnam, has built is not mere aquaculture. A young man with a law degree raised snails \u2014 worth next to nothing as a raw food \u2014 to a unit price an order of magnitude higher through processing and story. How to turn a cheap raw material into a high-value product: this turnabout is worth reading for Japanese sourcing staff too.<\/p>\n

How a law graduate came to raise snails in the countryside<\/h2>\n

Nhon studied law in Ho Chi Minh City. Job options lay in the city, but what he chose was to raise snails in his home area of Tra Tan. In 2018 he started farming with capital of about 100 million dong (about \u00a5590,000), but early on he was hit by mass die-offs and a run of failures. He worked out water-quality, feed, and density management by self-study, and opened the know-how that survived to farmers in the region.<\/p>\n

Today his chain has 20 farms nationwide. Each farm is about 3 hectares and ships about 200 kg of mature snails a day. The average unit price is 50,000 dong per kg (about \u00a5290). The 20 farms' combined daily sales reach 200 million dong (about \u00a51.18 million), with a profit margin put at about 60%. Raw-food snails are a byword for thin margins, but building the earnings on scale and turnover was the winning line of the first stage.<\/p>\n

The second stage: transforming cheap snails with herbs<\/h2>\n

What sets Nhon's business apart from mere aquaculture is its step into processed goods. Snail sausage made in a herbal style with cordyceps and lingzhi (reishi) goes for 220,000\u2013360,000 dong per kg (about \u00a51,300\u20132,100). Snails raised on feed mixed with herbs sell for 250,000\u2013350,000 dong per kg (about \u00a51,450\u20132,050). Considering that raw mature snails were about \u00a5290 per kg, processing and rearing tweaks alone send the unit price jumping from several times to nearly ten times. And both of these products are exported to South Korea.<\/p>\n

Wrapping a cheap raw material in the context of herbs and sending it to a health-conscious neighboring market. The idea of placing it on an overseas shelf as a functional ingredient, rather than as a cheap domestic product, is the source of this business's added value.<\/p>\n

The structure of the snail business in numbers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Item<\/th>\nVietnam price<\/th>\nYen conversion (\u00a51 \u2248 170 dong)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Raw mature snails<\/th>\n50,000 dong\/kg<\/td>\nabout \u00a5290\/kg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Herb-raised snails<\/th>\n250,000\u2013350,000 dong\/kg<\/td>\nabout \u00a51,450\u20132,050\/kg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Herbal snail sausage<\/th>\n220,000\u2013360,000 dong\/kg<\/td>\nabout \u00a51,300\u20132,100\/kg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Chain's daily sales<\/th>\n200 million dong<\/td>\nabout \u00a51.18 million<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Initial investment<\/th>\nabout 100 million dong<\/td>\nabout \u00a5590,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

The price gap between raw and processed shows the business's blueprint directly. It is a two-tier setup: at the raw stage, thin profit is smoothed out by scale, and at the processing stage, the unit price is sent jumping.<\/p>\n

How the local people and the industry take it<\/h2>\n

The response shows in the numbers too. Nhon has by now coached more than 1,000 farming households in farming, of which about 300 are said to have established a profitable model. Even small ones earn roughly 20 million dong (about \u00a5120,000) a month, and in cases like the on-track farmer Nguyen Thanh, 40\u201370 million dong (about \u00a5240,000\u2013410,000) a month. That a young man who gave up a city job left a template for earning in his hometown is valued in the region.<\/p>\n

Recognition from the administration and startup-support side follows too. Nhon received the Luong Dinh Cua Award honoring young farmers in 2022, and in 2023 took top prize in a Binh Thuan Province startup contest and placed in a Lam Dong Province innovation review. Behind it is the track record of raising a plain subject \u2014 cheap snails \u2014 into a startup model that the administration backs.<\/p>\n

On the market side, it is telling that South Korea, with its high interest in medicinal cuisine and health foods, serves as the receptacle. The flow of Vietnamese processed snail goods onto a neighboring country's shelves bears out that the payment attaches not to the raw material itself but to the 'processed story.' Even the same snail, in its domestic form boiled in the shell at a street stall and in its export form kneaded with cordyceps and vacuum-packed, reaches entirely different consumers at entirely different price ranges.<\/p>\n

On the farming-technique side too, the meaning of sharing with surrounding farmers the process of overcoming the early mass die-offs is large. Freshwater snails are sensitive to changes in water temperature and quality, and raising the density too high spreads disease easily. By putting the key points of feed, density, and water management into words and opening them, Nhon let following farmers avoid the same failures. Turning farming knowledge that had been person-dependent into a template is tied to that figure of 300 households becoming profitable.<\/p>\n

Implications for Japanese delicacy and ethnic-food buyers<\/h2>\n

Japan has a culture of eating snails too. Paddy pond snails (tanishi) survive in various regions as material for tsukudani and miso simmer, and snails such as escargot, turban shell (sazae), and whelk are rooted in delicacy sections and izakaya menus. Vietnamese freshwater snails are a candidate raw material that can be grafted onto this delicacy and ethnic-food lineage. As raw frozen shelled meat they go to material for tsukudani or stir-fries; as herbal processed goods they can be sorted into health-oriented prepared dishes or gift delicacies.<\/p>\n

What is worth noting is the design of the degree of processing. There is a path of importing raw frozen material and seasoning it domestically, and a path of placing a finished product like herbal sausage on the shelf as a differentiated item. The former is price-driven raw-material sourcing, the latter is product sourcing that sells on story \u2014 the shelves they aim at are entirely different. Nhon's case shows clearly, through the price gap, that even the same snail attracts a different buyer at each tier of processing. If a Japanese buyer is to consider it, the entry point is how to set domestic food-sanitation standards, shellfish import quarantine, and the premise of cooking as a parasite countermeasure.<\/p>\n

The way price appears is worth grasping too. The level of about \u00a5290 per kg for raw mature snails is, even compared with domestic pond snails and turban shells, in the cheap category as raw material. Even adding shipping and heat-processing costs on top, enough competitiveness remains as material for tsukudani or stir-fries. On the other hand, herbal processed goods can aim at a shelf of around \u00a52,000 per kg as health-oriented prepared dishes or gift delicacies. The appeal in sourcing this snail lies in being able to draw, from the same producing area, two tracks at once \u2014 a line that secures volume with cheap raw material and a line that commands unit price with processed goods.<\/p>\n

Ripple effects on the industry<\/h2>\n

This move does not stop at the single item of snails. The template of lifting a cheap seafood raw material through processing and functionality overlaps with the trend of Vietnamese seafood processing steering from mass production to added value. In pangasius (catfish) producing areas too, moves to shift the footing from mass export of fillets to processed goods are appearing, and Vietnam's pangasius processed-goods strategy<\/a> the same logic has begun to turn for freshwater snails as well. It is a transition to the stage of selling a processed product, not selling raw material.<\/p>\n

That South Korea surfaces as an export destination is also not to be missed. South Korea is incorporating Vietnam as a sourcing base for health and functional foods, and the flow of South Korea positioning Vietnam as a K-food logistics hub<\/a> positions such herbal snails within it too. The idea of reshaping a niche raw material into a high-margin business is shared with other special farming, such as porcupine farming in Dong Nai<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Practical information<\/h2>\n

If Japanese sourcing staff consider freshwater snails, the points to check narrow to a few. First, because shellfish carry a parasite risk, a design that presumes heat processing and does not treat them as raw-food use is realistic. Second, at import the classification changes with the degree of processing. Raw material such as frozen shelled meat and seasoned processed goods differ in the sanitary certificates and labeling requirements needed. Third, the stability of supply. A supplier that runs across multiple farms, like Nhon's chain, is resilient to seasonal fluctuations and to an accident at a single producing area. The sound procedure is first to test-cook a small volume of frozen raw material and judge whether it suits existing Japanese ways of eating, such as tsukudani or stir-fry, or can stand as an original herbal processed product.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h2>\n

Nguyen Huu Nhon's case proves, through the price gap between raw and processed, that even a cheap raw material can reach an order-of-magnitude-higher unit price depending on the design of processing and story. A snail at about \u00a5290 per kg becomes, in herbal style, an export product from the high \u00a51,000s to over \u00a52,000. For Japan's delicacy and ethnic-food sections, the freshwater snail is the sprout of a new raw material that can be grafted onto existing culture. Use it as a raw material for seasoning, or source it as a differentiated herbal processed product \u2014 a different shelf opens at each tier of processing.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h2>\n