Passion for soursop from trend sầu riêng to sầu riêng reporting love or hatred
According to Dai Kieu’s review channel, a Vietnamese woman married and living in China, last year in China, everywhere there was soursop for sale, the people here love this fruit very much.
Remarkably, although soursop is sold at high prices here, there is no such thing as selling soursop to eat like in Vietnam. Therefore, it is normal for people who do not know how to choose good soursop.
Ms. Kieu said: On social media, Chinese people are rushing to share videos of peeling soursop. Some people bought soursop at a high price but couldn’t peel any sections, some peeled some sections but they were spoiled, some were lucky to get sweet and fragrant soursop that also had thin skin.
Therefore, in China, there is a popular saying: Soursop reports love, soursop reports hatred (when peeling soursop without getting any sections or getting spoiled sections means “reporting hatred”, when removing big and beautiful sections that are delicious means “reporting love” – PV)
If you can’t peel any section, it must be soursop reporting hatred
In a review clip of selecting soursop in July last year, Ms. Kieu said that the price of soursop at a store is 35.8 CNY/half kg, equivalent to about 240 – 250 thousand VND/kg. The store employee also told Ms. Kieu that the price of soursop will continue to increase.
Image cut from Ms. Kieu’s clip of selecting soursop
“After being exposed to this job, I only ate soursop. It didn’t taste good before, the first time I ate it made me feel sick. But gradually I found it fragrant and then I liked to eat soursop,” VOV interviewed a fruit vendor in China on the occasion of Tet Giap Thin 2024 and recorded.
Since the Lunar New Year of 2022, soursop has been very popular, becoming even “hotter” in 2023. According to the community e-commerce platform Meituan Select, among fresh fruit items, soursop and cherries are preferred by consumers in Hangzhou city, with a sudden increase in sales of 845% and 551% compared to the previous month.
On Tet holiday, soursop is more preferred and becomes a luxury and expensive gift in the populous country.
The Chinese Farmers News stated that since September 2023, Tan Phat Dia – the largest agricultural market in Asia in Beijing – has officially introduced the International Durian Area. According to Mao Dung Tap, a person known as the “Durian King” in Tan Phat Dia, on the lunar New Year, the amount of durian sold per day reaches about 20 tons, more than normal days.
The reason why Chinese people like to eat soursop is because it is nutritious and good for all ages, and when they eat it, they find it very fragrant and delicious.
Vietnam’s soursop achieves a record export in 2023
In the overall economic picture of the gloomy last year, agricultural exports became bright spots of positive growth. In 2023, fruits and vegetables were the fastest-growing group of exports, with a record turnover of 5.69 billion USD, a 69.2% increase compared to 2022.
In terms of types of fruit and vegetable exports in 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, the fruit (fresh and frozen) category reached 4.2 billion USD, an increase of 112%; next is the processed fruit and vegetable category, reaching nearly 1.2 billion USD, an increase of 18%; the vegetable category reached 279 million USD, an increase of 4.9%.
In terms of the market in 2023, China continued to hold the number one position with a turnover of over $3.7 billion, an increase of 149% (equivalent to an increase of over $2 billion) compared to 2022 and accounted for about 65.4% of the total fruit and vegetable export turnover of countries.
For the soursop product, in just 10 months of 2023, exports officially exceeded the $2 billion mark when reaching $2.07 billion, an increase of 606.3% compared to the same period in 2022. Calculated for the whole year 2023, soursop exports brought in $2.24 billion, a record number. Previously, according to information from the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association, from 2021 and earlier, soursop exports were only about $200 million per year.
Illustrative image of soursop
Like other agricultural products, the main market for soursop is China. Thanks to the increasing trend of eating soursop here, the price of this fruit has continuously increased and reached a record high in the past year.
Just entering the early days of 2024, the price of soursop again increased sharply, approaching 200 thousand VND/kg, promising a year of this nutritious fruit.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the fruit and vegetable export turnover in January 2024 reached about $458.741 million, an increase of 89.2% compared to the same period in 2023. It is worth noting that many fruit and vegetable export orders were “full” in the first quarter of 2024, of which soursop still has great potential, opening up positive signals for the industry.
For soursop, the Association of Vietnamese High-quality Goods Business said that the soursop market capacity for China could reach $20 billion and the world is $28.6 billion by 2025. The growth rate of the soursop industry in the 2019-2025 period is predicted to be about 7.2% per year. This is considered a great opportunity for Vietnamese soursop if it develops in a sustainable direction in the time to come.
According to the assessments of experts in the field of agriculture, to expand the export market for Vietnamese soursop, not only in China but also around the world, Vietnamese soursop needs to focus on improving the quality of soursop, focusing on stages: preservation, preliminary processing, processing to increase value.
