Vietnamese products on sale at a foreign mall (Photo: VNA) Online newspaper Hanoimoi.com.vn cited Makoto Nakamura, an international tradeconsultant at the Japan External Trade Organisation as saying that whenconsuming food products, health and safety was the top priority of Japanesepeople and then the price.
Agricultural and food products that entered the Japanese market had to undergoanimal and plant quarantine inspections. Also, these goods had to comply withJapan’s regulations on environmental sanitation.
Vietnamese trade counsellor in Japan Ta Duc Minh suggested Vietnameseenterprises document links from production and preservation to transportationwhile meeting Japan’s regulations on standards if they wanted to enhance theirfoothold and then expand in the Japanese market.
Minh said though retail systems in Japan had strict requirements and most of Vietnam’sexports were made through intermediaries, Vietnamese enterprises should try todirectly work with Japanese importers to enhance the value of their brands.
Minh suggested enterprises that wanted to enter the Japanese market shouldfirst participate in fairs and exhibitions in Japan where they could find newpartners, as well as learn about consumer trends.
For the US, another lucrative market for Vietnamese goods, Vince Tran, arepresentative of Walmart supermarkets in Vietnam advised Vietnamese businessesto dive deeper into the US consumer market. He said they should developproducts that were suitable to the tastes of US consumers and ensure theirproduction capacities had adequate volume to produce competitively pricedgoods.
According to the Director-General of the European-American Market Departmentunder the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) Ta Hoang Linh, over the pastyears, Vietnamese enterprises had improved their understanding of internationalimport-export standards. However, the firms needed to make greater efforts incementing the foothold of their products on international supermarket shelves.
Linh said the MoIT would continue to support Vietnamese businesses to exportand sell goods on cross-border e-commerce platforms. This would aim to not onlyincrease the number of enterprises with products available in foreign retailsystems, contributing to increasing the nation’s export turnover but also tomake Vietnam an important source of goods for major foreign markets.
The MoIT and a number of distribution groups launched a set of manuals to guideVietnamese enterprises to export more effectively. The MoIT said the manualprovided basic and useful information about different markets while explainingthe supplier selection process, requirements and standards of some productswhen exporting to each distribution system such as Aeon, Decathlon, Lotte,Center Retail and Mega Market.
In June, over 150 Vietnamese products of high quality were showcased in theVietnamese Goods Week jointly held in Thailand's Udon Thani province by theVietnamese Trade Office in Thailand and the Central Group.
The event themed "A Flavour of Vietnam" had 20 Vietnamese firms,including Dalat Hasfarm, which sold fresh flowers and plants, the Lam Dong PharmaceuticalJSC, Dong Xuan knitting company, Hong Ha and Thien Long stationery companies.
In the same month, about 350 stores and supermarkets of retail giant AEONspread across Japan, along with its website, displayed a number of Vietnameseproducts for the Vietnamese Goods Week.
The products on display included fresh fruits like lychee and banana, food,garments-textiles, leather and footwear, household utensils, and handicrafts.AEON imported 30 tonnes of lychee from Vietnam’s northern provinces of Bac Giangand Hai Duong to serve the event.
The annual Vietnamese Goods Week aims to raise AEON’s sales of Vietnameseproducts in Japan to 1 billion USD by 2025. Through the event, more than 100businesses from 21 Vietnamese cities and provinces introduced their products toJapanese consumers.
June also saw Vietnamese lychee available on the shelves of Asian supermarketsin the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Norway with the price of more than 500,000VND per kilo for the first time. This was considered a good beginning forlychee and many types of Vietnamese goods accessing the European market.
At the same time, Vietnamese trade offices in other foreign countries alsofacilitated the import of Vietnamese goods. Notably, in July, the VietnameseTrade Office in Australia helped bring rice, dragon fruit, mango, litchi andlongan from Vietnam into the Australian supermarkets.
A promotional programme titled “Vietnamese green mango, homeland flavour” isunderway in Australia until the end of this month.
According to the Vietnamese Trade Office in Australia, stores and supermarketsin Melbourne and Sydney are selling Vietnamese green mangoes for 15-17 AUD per kilo.
The MoIT said that thousands of Vietnamese businesses have been connecting withforeign distributors such as Aeon in Japan, Central Retail and Mega Market inThailand, Lotte in the Republic of Korea and Walmart in the US. It wasestimated that over the past five years, Vietnam's average annual exportturnover through foreign distribution systems was about 2 billion USD./.
VNA
