Visitors to the largest fruit wholesale market in North Vietnam ...
The Fruit Republic sold pomelo fruits and fresh cut pomelo during a charity event in HCMC ...
Since January, The Fruit Republic is successfully exporting seedless lime and fresh coconuts to Asian markets.
The Vietnamese have a fantastic food culture, in which herbs, vegetables and fruits play a crucial role. The vegetable consumption already starts at breakfast with the delicious pho and continues with lunch and dinner.
It is no surprise that the Vietnamese have one of the highest vegetable consumption figures per capita in the world. Also fruits play a very important role in the Vietnamese culture. Fruits are consumed after lunch and dinner and during work breaks in the morning and afternoon. Fruits are also used as gifts, offered in temples and at family altars at home, in respect for the forefathers.
Unfortunately food safety issues for a wide range of products in Vietnam (meat, noodles, soy sauce, fruit, vegetables), have made consumers very concerned about food safety. As for most products it is not known where they are produced, how and by whom, the Vietnamese consumer feels very insecure how to feed their families with healthy and safe food. To give back to our community, we decided it is our responsibility to develop a fresh produce portfolio for the domestic market, so that Vietnamese families can enjoy ‘home-grown’ fruit and vegetables without having to worry about food safety.
We have developed a portfolio of over 100 different fruit and vegetable products, which are sold under our brand: Mekostar. Every day we supply these products nationwide to supermarkets and professional food service customers and smaller produce shops through our strong distribution network.
Each product is fully traceable to the farm where it was produced and all farmers are closely monitored by our team of agronomists and quality assurance staff.
Right from the start we have been working hard to make our fruits special and different from the rest. We started by exporting the Vietnamese pomelo, which until we started, was unknown on the world market.
Most sold pomelo’s in Europe and Asia were being supplied by China, Thailand and a small volume came from Israel. What made our product different, was the taste (more juicy and more flavor) and our ability to supply our pomelo year-round, meeting the highest international standards.
After the successful introduction of our pomelo, we developed a second unique product: a year-round program of untreated seedless lime. Again we were able to make a distinction in the market, our limes are very juicy, have a nice deep green colour and are untreated after the harvest. This means that our untreated limes are not waxed and no post-harvest fungicides are used. This makes our limes the perfect ingredient for food and drinks.
Our products are available in leading supermarket chains across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We work with world class importers and distribution companies, with whom we develop long term relations for regular supply programs.
Through our dedicated cold store and logistic service provider in the Netherlands, we are also able to serve customers in Western Europe on a per pallet basis. For most customers we have weekly arrivals of containers by sea, 52 weeks per year, in various harbors around the world.
For our range of fresh cut products, herbs and exotics with shorter shelf life, we have developed regular air freight shipment programs. We are using special insulated thermal covers for our pallets to assure that our products are well protected from temperature shocks during transit. We monitor this carefully with temperature data-loggers on every shipment.