Reporter | Xie Xiaodan
Edit | Ren Xuesong
With its unique flavor, durian has attracted a large number of fans. In 2016, Yuan Chang, founder of the air durian brand Mead Lian, participated in an air durian tasting in Hong Kong, and the ticket price of up to 880 yuan per person still attracts many durian lovers.
Yuan Chang was surprised by the format of this tasting, and he noticed that each durian tasting had 100 registrations for one session, held four times a day, and the organizer could even hold it for one month in a row. Inspired by this, Yuan Chang also embarked on the road to Thailand the following year to search for durian, preparing to also try to attract fans of durian and develop the durian tasting business.
In the traditional fruit sales channel, durian is also the king of fruits. Every year after February, with the arrival of Thai airborne gallon, domestic supermarkets and sales stores have also begun to enter the rhythm of preparing for the durian sales season.
From the experience of Pagoda, from March to June every year, in the gap where a large number of domestic fruits have not yet been listed, durian is a fruit flow password that drives traffic and increases the unit price of customers through various channels such as major supermarkets, wholesale, and e-commerce.
However, China is not the country of origin of durian, and although small-scale trial seeds have been carried out in Hainan, it is still not possible to grow them industrially. So far, a large number of durian fresh fruits have been imported from Thailand. From the data of 2022, the total import of durian is 825,000 tons, worth 4.03 billion US dollars. Of that amount, 780,000 tons came from Thailand.
In July of that year, Vietnamese fresh durian began to officially enter the Chinese market, and in January 2023, the General Administration of Customs began to allow the import of Philippine fresh durian that meets the relevant requirements.
The two countries began to bet on China's growing durian market, with Deng Phuc Yuan, secretary general of the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Association, once saying: "The Chinese market is huge, with an estimated demand of 1.3 million tons per year, while Thailand and Malaysia only supply about half." ”
However, the import of durian involves as many as dozens of links, and the fresh durian fruit will rot and deteriorate if you are not careful. As a result, those in the durian business are trying to transform this perishable fresh fruit into a controlled, standardized item.
The fruit king broke out
Around 2015, Hong Jiu Fruit began to notice the explosion of durian business, and before that, Hong Jiu Fruit had been rooted in the imported fruit business for many years.
After Hongjiu Fruit was officially established in 2022, in the early years, founder Deng Hongjiu imported fruits wholesale from Guangzhou to Chongqing. It was not until 2011 that Deng Hongjiu realized that the secondary wholesalers of fruits did not have price advantages, quality advantages and volume advantages, and the source of customers was gradually decreasing, so he decided to lay out the place of origin.
Initially, the imported fruit category that Hong Jiu Fruit cultivated in Thailand was longan, and only then realized the potential of durian. Deng Haoji, chief operating officer of Hongjiu Fruits, told Interface News that since 2015 and 2016, the demand for durian market has begun to increase rapidly, when the sales of the entire Chinese fruit industry increased at a rate of 9%, while durian grew at a rate of 20% to 30%.
According to Deng Haoji's analysis, from the consumer's point of view, durian has a unique flavor, from the beginning can not accept the smell of durian, to the unique taste of delicious taste, in the domestic formation of a lot of durian control, formed a large number of market demand.
Secondly, from the supply side, durian is a scarce single product, the current trial seed in Hainan is not mature, the demand is growing, durian trees to grow for 5 to 7 years to bear fruit, gradually abundant, the production growth cycle is relatively long, so the price will continue to increase.
Since then, durian has gradually become the most important fruit category of Hongjiu fruits. According to the prospectus of Hongjiuguo, durian sales revenue increased from 473 million yuan in 2019 to 2.107 billion yuan in 2020. From 2018 to the first half of 2021, the proportion of sales revenue of Hongjiuguo durian increased from 9.4% to 38%.
In hindsight, Hong Jiu Fruit did bet on the growth of durian. According to Chinese customs statistics, in 2021, the import volume of fresh durian in mainland China reached 821,600 tons, with an import amount of US$4.205 billion, a year-on-year increase of 42.66% and 82.44% respectively. Compared with 2017, the import volume increased by 597,200 tons, an increase of 266.16%; The import value increased by 3.653 billion US dollars, an increase of 661.78%.
The data declined slightly until 2022, when imports were 825,000 mt worth $4.03 billion.
After 2019, China's imported fresh durians surpassed cherries in quantity, becoming the king of imported fruits. At the same time, durian is also the item with the highest gross profit margin among imported fruits.
On September 5, 2022, Hongjiu Fruit was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. According to the prospectus, at present, the gross profit margin of Hongjiu Fruit's core fruit is 17.5%, and the fruit with the highest gross profit margin is durian, with a gross profit margin of 18.9%-21% in the past three years.
In addition to Hongjiu fruits, the growth of the durian market in China has also enabled many people who have been engaged in Sino-Thai trade for a long time to find business opportunities. Xue Liang, the supplier of Fat Donglai durian and the head of Thailand of Zhengzhou Xianghe Yuancai Trading Co., Ltd., is one of them.
Having lived in Thailand for many years, Xue Liang has started two cross-border import and export businesses at the same time, one of which is the sale of Thai durian to China. Xue Liang said, "Durian has a threshold, not anyone can do it, the threshold is the firewall." ”
Durian blind box
The threshold lies in the difficulty of importing durian fresh fruit and the huge amount of funds required.
On social media, consumers often jokingly refer to the experience of opening durian as opening a blind box, and the durian with full fruit is called "retribution durian" by netizens, and the poorer quality is called "revenge durian".
However, for people in the imported durian industry chain, if they encounter "opening the durian blind box", it may mean losses and even no return.
In the past few years of engaging in the durian business, Yuan Chang has paid the tuition fee in full. In 2017, before Yuan Chang set out on the road to find Thai durian, his idea was simple: shorten the intermediate link of imported durian as much as possible: let the durian grow on the tree enough to mature before picking, and then immediately fly back to China and express it to customers.
This model is enough for him to invest a small amount of money to operate. At that time, through the introduction of a friend, Yuan Chang found a local durian orchard owner in Thailand who was proficient in Chinese and reached a cooperation with Baoguo. He contracted five old durian trees in the orchard and told the orchard owner to pick them 10 days later than the other trees and buy them at a price that exceeded the market at the time.
However, this attempt was different from Yuan's original vision. After the durian was sent to the customer by air, Yuan Chang received feedback one after another, and the durian was not ripe. So, he began to refund all customers, and finally lost more than 50,000 yuan in the whole batch of durian.
This is the first tuition fee paid by Yuan Chang after entering the durian business. Afterwards, Yuan Chang speculated that he may have been pitted by fruit farmers or air freight forwarders.
However, as Yuan Chang learned more about the durian industry in Thailand, he realized that local fruit farmers may be more accustomed to picking durian according to the needs of bulk traders.
For a long time, the durian business has been in the hands of more financially strong import traders, who have higher purchases and greater say. In Thailand, Yuan Chang often heard people say that making durian and mangosteen is basically impossible without 20 million to start, but 8 or 9 of the 10 people who throw in it may eventually fall.
According to Yuan Chang's observation, "traders generally enter the fruit wholesale market after importing durian, they are calculated according to the cabinet, one container is 19 tons, and it takes at least hundreds of containers to start with trade, and 10 containers are very small traders." ”
These traders tend to import durian by land and sea at a lower cost. This means that it takes longer to enter the Chinese market from Thailand, which generally takes 7 days for land transportation and 12 to 15 days for sea freight.
Therefore, imported durian traders have formed a complete set of processes to turn perishable fresh fruits into more standardized, stable and controllable products, such as the need to pick durians in advance when 6 and 7 are ripe, through preservation, sterilization, disinfection, ripening processes, but also to stack, air dry fermentation, trigger the natural growth of durian, in the long import road, durian slowly ripen.
Deng Haoji introduced that during the journey, it is also necessary to make different temperature control adjustments according to the different rainy and dry seasons in Thailand, as well as the different shipping and land transportation routes. Even according to the temperature situation in China's spring, summer and winter, it is necessary to adjust accordingly. There are more than 60 processes involved in imported durian, and if one link is not done well, the quality of the whole container of durian will be greatly reduced.
This is also one of the risks of fresh fruit imports. Once they encounter congestion on the road, exceeding the freshness time of durian, it will cause quality damage, and they have to reduce the price. In the past three years, many respondents have experienced varying degrees of clearance pain. Xiao Baoge, a wholesaler of imported fruits in Shouheng Gaobeidian Market, estimates, "A cabinet of durian is worth between 600,000 and 700,000 in the summer, and 1 million to 1.1 million before the Spring Festival. ”
According to Pagoda's observation, the main thing is that logistics and customs clearance time increase the hidden cost of durian imports. The capacity of short-sea routes is seriously insufficient, sea and land transportation costs have skyrocketed, while global flights are seriously delayed and delayed, the destination port is seriously congested, containers cannot be unloaded at the port, the proportion of customs inspection is increased, and the queue time of port sanitize is too long... Various factors can affect the cost of imports.
Deng Haoji also jokingly called durian the king of difficulty, "Durian is the most difficult item to operate in the whole fresh fruit industry, and every breakthrough is the experience of paying tuition fees at a loss of tens of thousands of times." ”
Cross-border trade
Unlike bulk trade, the durian that Yuan Chang needs must be at least 9 years old. Therefore, after paying several tuition fees in Thailand, Yuan Chang chose to invest in the establishment of a durian factory in Thailand, and then cooperate with local senior masters through the factory to purchase fresh fruits from the hands of fruit farmers at a high price.
Other durian traders have chosen to pack orchards. "Assuming that we can pick fruits in a month's time, now we will go to the tree to count the fruits, calculate the yield, and estimate how many containers will be shipped in the end." Little Brother said.
But there are also certain risks associated with this approach. Xiao Bao Ge said, "Suppose the orchard was agreed to buy 80 baht, and the market rose to 100 baht a month later, and the goods were also 80 baht, I would have earned, but if the market fell, then I would have lost." ”
In addition to Thailand, the import of durian from Vietnam and the Philippines means that the domestic durian sales time is extended. Taking Vietnam's unique variety of Ganyao durian as an example, the peak season from October to May each year fills the gap after the peak period of Thai durian from April to September.
Only open for more than half a year, according to Yang Jianfei, head of the market of Shouheng Gaobeidian , Vietnam's durian imports have accounted for 10% to 20% of the total amount of durian imported in the market.
Yang Jianfei said, "China imported Thai durian earlier, it is relatively stable, Vietnam also has a certain large-scale planting, but the Philippines currently has fewer durian orchards, large-scale planting will take time." ”
Domestic distributors are also eyeing these countries, including many new faces in the domestic durian market. Chinese companies, including Dole (Shanghai) Fruit and Vegetable Trading Co., Ltd./Dole China, Tianyu International (China) Co., Ltd., Canong Food Holdings (Group) Co., Ltd. and Dashang Group, have committed to purchase durian worth US$260 million in 2023, according to a statement released by the Philippine Department of Agriculture.
Among them, Dole China is regarded as a "newcomer" in the Chinese durian market. At present, Dole China's durian sales are mainly frozen series, and after opening up the import of Philippine durian fresh fruit, it will start to deploy fresh durian sales through online e-commerce, offline supermarkets and wholesale markets.
It has gradually become a trend for traders in Shouheng Gaobeidian Market to invest and build factories in Thailand and Vietnam. Yang Jianfei said, "Many of these durian factories in Thailand are Chinese investment, and Vietnam now has such an industrial chain, and the two or three largest durian factories in Vietnam are all Chinese open." ”
With the deepening of fruit trade between the two countries, changes in the Chinese market have also crossed the border and been transmitted to the place of origin through import distributors. "Thailand's market is to follow the country, but whenever it comes to Chinese holidays, Thailand's durian market will definitely rise, they have figured it out, domestic holiday sales will be high, so they will increase prices." Xue Liang said.
In the future, change may soon come to the Philippines. "From the perspective of local ecology and awareness of post-ripening processes, the maturity of the durian industry in the Philippines is very low, and there are even no mature professional durian pickers in the Philippines." "We considered sending teams from Thailand and Vietnam to the Philippines to migrate post-ripening, preservation and even harvesting techniques to complete the local ecological construction," said Deng Jihao. ”