Dong Thap Province in Vietnam is prioritising investment in fruit and vegetable processing to increase product value and market access. The province currently operates 25 fruit processing enterprises with a total capacity of about 700,000 tons per year.
Entrepreneur Nguyen Thi Minh Thy, Director of Bac My Thuan Production Trading Services Co., Ltd. in An Huu Commune, established a dried fruit business under the BamoFood brand. "On one of my visits home, I saw many ripe mangoes falling to the ground, and I remembered the dried mango and banana snacks my grandmother used to make. I peeled and dried some mangoes and gave them to relatives and friends. Everyone loved them. That gave me the idea of producing soft-dried mangoes so that more people could enjoy them, and to bring Hoa Loc mango to a wider market," she said.
The company has since diversified into drying bananas, soursop, pineapple, dragon fruit, and guava, with Hoa Loc mango and dragon fruit as its key products. Each year, it supplies about 50 tons of dried fruit to the market, equivalent to 500 tons of raw fruit.
Thabico Tien Giang Food Industry JSC also focuses on fruit and vegetable processing. For cold-dried fruit and vegetables, the company applies Dutch technology with a capacity of 4,500 tons per year. It also produces concentrated fruit juice using Italian technology that recaptures aroma during evaporation, with a capacity of 10,000 tons per year. In addition, it operates an Individual Quick Freezing (IQF) line to process large volumes of fruit while maintaining quality.
The province has encouraged investment in fruit and vegetable processing through favourable policies and logistics improvements, including cold storage centres at Sa Dec, Thuong Phuoc, and Go Cong ports. One new fruit and coconut processing plant covers 4.8 hectares with a capacity of 120,000 tons per year, applying modern IQF freezing technology.
According to Le Ha Luan, Director of the Dong Thap Department of Agriculture and Environment, the growth of fruit and vegetable processing has reduced reliance on raw exports while expanding access to more demanding markets. Modern technologies now in use include irradiation, heat treatment, vacuum sealing, modified atmosphere packaging, colour separation, automatic grading, and biofilm preservation combined with ethylene absorption to extend shelf life.
Dong Thap aims to strengthen its position as a processing hub in the Mekong Delta by promoting deep-processing projects, developing raw material zones for fruit and vegetables, and expanding logistics capacity.
Source: Nhan Dan