Lychee exports to Japan going smoothly: Trade counsellor
A year after Japan first opened its market to Vietnamese lychees, the export and consumption of the fruit have been going smoothly despite COVID-19, Vietnam’s trade office in the Northeast Asian country said.
Vietnamese lychees sold at an AEON supermarket in Japan (Photo: VNA)
Tokyo (VNA) - A year after Japan first opened its market toVietnamese lychees, the export and consumption of the fruit have been goingsmoothly despite COVID-19, Vietnam’s trade office in the Northeast Asiancountry said.
Ta Duc Minh, Trade Counsellor of Vietnam in Japan, said that due to the impactof the pandemic, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF)didn’t send experts to monitor lychee packaging and sterilisation this year butinstead authorised Vietnam’s plant quarantine agency to do so.
This helped save time and cost in preparing the lychees for export,creating better conditions for the fruit to enter Japan, he noted.
The first batch of Vietnamese lychees, under a contract signed betweenJapan’s Sunrise Farm and the Ameii Vietnam JSC, arrived in Japan on May 23.
Vietnamese exporters plan to ship about 1,000 tonnes of fresh lychees,which are now in season, to Japan this year, Minh said, attributing thatoutcome partly to the trade office’s early implementation of promotionalactivities in Tokyo and many other localities around the country.
The trade office is continuing to coordinate with relevant agencies in Vietnamand distribution networks in Japan to step up these efforts, helping the fruitbecome more popular among Japanese consumers, the Trade Counsellor added.
Vietnam began negotiating lychee exports to Japan in 2014. After fiveyears, on December 15, 2019, the MAFF announced that Japan had officiallyopened its market to Vietnamese lychees but also requested that the fruitundergo a strict plant quarantine process prior to export.
In early June 2020, an agricultural expert from Japan was sent toVietnam to monitor fruit packaging and sterilisation, completing the final steprequired by Japan for lychees to be shipped to the market./.
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Vietnamese lychees sold at an AEON supermarket in Japan (Photo: VNA) 
