GS25, South Korea's largest convenience-store chain, announced on August 10, 2026 that it had made Del Monte's banana farm in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam, its own dedicated designated farm. About 50 km from Ho Chi Minh City, it has set up a system to source more than 200,000 packs a month at a consistent quality, selling them in-store at KRW 1,990 a pack (about JPY 210\u2013220). This is not mere securing of a supplier. It is \"enclosure-type\" procurement that builds grading through individual packaging into a dedicated line on the growing-region side and takes hold of the upstream of the supply network whole. Bananas from the same Tay Ninh region also flow to Japan, so for Japanese retailers and trading firms considering Vietnam produce, this is not a story on the far shore.<\/p>\n
GS25 did not take hold of the farm all at once. From March 2026 it began selling the farm's bananas ahead of time, and by the end of July cumulative sales had reached about KRW 700 million (about JPY 77 million, about US$490,000). Only after confirming that the sales held up did it formally switch to a \"designated farm.\" Sales take the form of a limited quantity during a monthly \"Fresh Week,\" put out to match the peaks of demand.<\/p>\n
The crux of the design is that grading and individual-packaging lines are attached at the farm. Because it is finished in Vietnam into individual packs of 3\u20135 bananas, stores can order by the pack to match their own sales, rather than by the conventional box. GS25 says this reduces stores' inventory burden and raises logistics and store-operation efficiency. Rather than summing it up as an \"exclusive contract,\" it is closer to reality to see it as a designated farm with a dedicated line that carves out the grading and packaging processes for GS25.<\/p>\n
This move is easier to read once you know the structure of Vietnam's banana exports. Vietnam's banana export value in 2024 was about US$370 million, grown to a scale that puts it among the world's top 10 countries. The largest partner is China, which imported about 630,000 tonnes and about US$260 million in 2024, with Vietnam overtaking the Philippines to become China's largest banana supplier. However, because prices to China are negotiated weekly, the price movement is rough.<\/p>\n
Japan-bound shipments, meanwhile, were about 33,000 tonnes in 2024. The market share rose roughly 14-fold, from 0.2% in 2019 to 3.2% in 2024. Vietnamese product benefits from quality and appearance, plus a price about 10% cheaper than Philippine product. According to reports, Japan and Korea have annual fixed prices while China is weekly negotiation. By volume, dependence on China is large, but by unit price and stability, the Japan and Korea markets are easier to handle. GS25's move to take hold of the growing region itself is a step to keep supply to this \"high-price, stable\" shelf from breaking.<\/p>\n
The lineup of growing regions overlaps too. Among producers in and around Tay Ninh, it is reported that some cooperatives send 50\u201360% of their harvest to Korea under the Del Monte brand and the rest to Japan. Korea and Japan are in a relationship of competing for the same farm, the same brand. The overall picture of Vietnam's main growing regions and items is A growing-region guide to Vietnamese fruit<\/a>.<\/p>\n How realistic is GS25-style procurement as an option Japan's mass retailers, convenience stores and trading firms can take? Designating the growing region and internalizing individual packaging is a move to maximize Vietnamese product's strength of being \"close and cheap.\" It curbs quality variation, compresses logistics costs, and makes private-brand (PB) development easier too. By enclosing everything through grading and packaging, it can further stabilize the roughly 10%-cheaper-than-Philippine cost.<\/p>\n But the costs on the flip side are not light either. Reliance on a single growing region carries the risk of taking on all at once a disease like Panama disease (TR4), erratic weather, or changes in export policy. Maintaining a dedicated line requires a minimum-volume commitment, and in a weak-yen phase, exchange also weighs heavily. It collides head-on with the idea of keeping price-negotiating power through diversified sourcing.<\/p>\n That is exactly why the point worth noting is that GS25 did not make the whole volume dedicated but entered from the period-and-quantity-limited frame of Fresh Week. It builds a shelf that sells first, then fixes the growing region after seeing the results. In this order, the Japanese side too can try it small by riding on the existing Del Monte\/Japan distribution. The mold by which Japanese companies have won in Vietnam procurement is 7 success cases of agribusiness in Vietnam<\/a> as laid out there, and the realistic landing point is to take hold of the growing region as a set with contract farming and technology provision.<\/p>\n The points a buyer considering a growing-region contract in practice should confirm, narrowed from this case to three.<\/p>\n The export competitiveness and the relative strengths of growing regions by Vietnam's main products can be A comparison guide to main products such as rice, coffee and shrimp<\/a> where they can be checked item by item.<\/p>\n What works in the GS25 case is the order\u2014it designated the farm only after selling out KRW 700 million in advance sales. Before enclosing the growing region, it proved demand, and brought individual packaging on site to lower stores' order units. It is procurement that bets not on the scale of 630,000 tonnes to China but on the 3.2% growth headroom to Japan and the stability of annual fixed prices. The point Japanese buyers can take home comes down to a single one: more than taking hold of the growing region itself, whether a shelf that sells out has been prepared before that.<\/p>\n South Korea's largest convenience-store chain, GS25, has designated a Del Monte plantation in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam, as exclusive to itself. We interpret this lock-up style of sourcing of more than 200,000 packs a month from the perspective of Japanese retailers and trading houses that source Vietnamese fresh produce.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[1,85,100],"tags":[593,595,594,40,274,596],"crop_category":[],"class_list":["post-1443","industry_news","type-industry_news","status-publish","hentry","category-vietnam-agri","category-fruits","category-logistics-supply-chain","tag-gs25","tag-595","tag-594","tag-banana","tag-274","tag-596"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry_news\/1443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry_news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/industry_news"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"crop_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vietnam-agri.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/crop_category?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Should Japanese retailers and trading firms move to \"enclose growing regions\"?<\/h2>\n
If you are going to bet on the Tay Ninh region, the three things to look at are year-round supply, individual packaging and price<\/h2>\n
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Summary: before taking hold of the farm, they built a shelf that sells out<\/h2>\n
Sources<\/h2>\n
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