In Mai Hoa commune, north-central Ha Tinh province, a groundbreaking ceremony for a farm pond was held on 10 August 2026. On one household's 2.24 hectares, grow-out ponds for tilapia will be built, and a joint venture bearing a Japanese name will look after everything from fingerlings to purchase. The move, reported the next day, the 11th, by the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), differs in character from a one-off export success story. It is the first step of a plan that designs export tilapia not as a 'point' but as a 'producing area,' growing it into a concentrated production zone over 2026\u20132030.<\/p>\n
For Japanese buyers and export players seeking a sourcing partner for white fish, what deserves attention is not the fish itself but the way the supply network behind it is built. A 'from upstream to downstream' type in which one company bundles fingerlings, feed, technique, and purchase is trying to rise from a region's idle ponds.<\/p>\n
The groundbreaking was held at the pond of Le Thanh Hung in Duc Giang hamlet, Mai Hoa commune. The total area of 2.24 hectares is divided into four ponds, three for grow-out and one for fingerlings. The investment is more than 2.5 billion dong (2.5 t\u1ef7 \u0111\u1ed3ng, about 14.7 million yen). In September 2026, 100,000 tilapia fingerlings are to be stocked, and the counterpart is the Vietnam-Japan joint venture Vi\u1ec7t Nh\u1eadt \u2013 BaiYang (Hung Yen province). The ceremony was attended by Ha Tinh province's rural-development coordination office.<\/p>\n
The Mai Hoa commune side had, in advance, surveyed five areas\u2014Dong Muou, Bau Ga, Bai Chan, Khe Suoi, and Dong Mo O\u2014as suitable for aquaculture. It consolidates lowlands and unused ponds and turns them into sizable grow-out water surface. The administration and the company have signed a memorandum on a production-linkage model through a cooperative, and Mr. Hung's pond is the first demonstration case of it.<\/p>\n
The symbolic event of Vietnamese tilapia cutting into the Japanese market was Can Tho's Clean Seafood shipping its first sashimi- and sushi-grade fillets. This success, lined up at more than 70 stores in Japan for raw consumption, showed that Vietnamese tilapia can move from a processing raw material to a high-value raw-consumption ingredient. But that was a 'point' breakthrough in which one company spent about half a year nailing down aquaculture and processing standards. For details see The background to tilapia exports to Japan rising in the first half<\/a>.<\/p>\n This time's Ha Tinh is an attempt to widen that breakthrough into an 'area.' Rather than making one lot of exportable fish, it first builds the land and the bundle of farmers that can continuously put out fish fit for export. The term 'concentrated production zone' carries the aim of supplying standardized raw material without interruption. As long as the Japanese procurement side seeks a stable long-term relationship with a producing area over a one-off deal, this order makes sense.<\/p>\n Behind the rush to build a producing area is the growth of export value. Here are the most recent figures that could be confirmed.<\/p>\nThe numbers of tilapia to Japan show the momentum<\/h2>\n