Vietnamese lychee to be sold online for first time

Lychees grown in Hai Duong Province will be sold on e-commerce platforms Voso, Sendo, Lazada and China’s Alibaba on Saturday, according to the Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency.

Lychee farmers in northern Hai Duong Province take their produce to a market. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh.

It would be the first time that the fruits are sold online, and the agency said the biggest hurdle to this is farmers’ lack of knowledge of e-commerce, online marketing, selling and customer support and quality control.

It has collaborated with the northern province’s Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development and Industry and Trade to provide training to lychee farmers and traders in setting up and operating stores on the four e-commerce platforms.

Hai Duong harvested 43,000 tons of lychee last year and exported half of it, including 1,600 tons to Japan, Australia and the U.S. It expects to harvest 55,000 tons this year, and export half to China.

In nearby Bac Giang Province, the director of the Department of Industry and Trade, Tran Quang Tan, estimated 180,000 tons of lychees would be harvested this year, with half of it exported to China, 10 percent to Japan and another 10 percent to the U.S., the EU and Australia.

The harvest will take two months starting May end.

Around 300 Chinese merchants have registered to visit Vietnam to buy lychees in Bac Giang.

Local authorities will arrange transportation for them at the border, test them for Covid-19 and quarantine them for 14 days.

The northern provinces of Bac Giang and Hai Duong are Vietnam’s lychee growing hubs, with the former having the largest area for lychee cultivation, which was 28,000 hectares last year, according to Bac Giang Portal. Hai Duong province came in second with 10,000 hectares, the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development reported.