Vietnam is the first country to win the export contract of rambutans to New Zealand. This is the third type of fruits of Vietnam that earns the access to this market. Earlier, since 2011 and 2014, New Zealand has allowed export of Vietnamese dragon fruits and mangos respectively.

Mr. Hoang Trung, Head of Plant Protection Department shared that New Zealand was one of the demanding markets with strict requirements of quarantine standards, fruit safety. Through seven years of submission and negotiation, the export permission granted by this country is a great success to enable accesses to other markets.

Particularly, according to Mr. Trung, in order to export rambutans to New Zealand, they are required to be encoded for planting areas, protected from harmful insects by Plant Protection Department; packed and labelled during harvesting. Moreover, every consignment must be irradiated to ensure no infection with harmful insects.   

On the other side, Ms. Wendy Matthews, New Zealand Ambassador to Vietnam, expressed the hope of seeing more New Zealand’s products at Vietnamese supermarkets and vice versa as a result of the recently signed CPTPP agreement. “Cooperation in agriculture is a good relationship that countries complement each other. It helps us share each other’s products and experience in agriculture”, the ambassador said.

Currently, the export of rambutans to the US, China, Canada and several countries in EU, Eastern European, Middle East, ASEAN has reached more than 20,000 tons. Such positive signs from fruit export will pave the ways for exporting more Vietnamese agricultural products to the world markets.

However, the export of rambutans still faces some difficulties as the fruit is so new to many oversea customers. Moreover, each importing country requires different standards of plant protection, e.g. US, New Zealand requires irradiation but South Korea does not. Furthermore, unfair competition between exporting companies or high air freight rates also make big impacts on the export of rambutans.