South Korea is set to expand its premium air-shipped foods export target list to include other Asian countries from Hong Kong to Thailand. This decision seems to stem from the successful pilot with strawberry-only export flights to Singapore.
After the pandemic left the industry struggling to sell its produce or get it overseas, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) piloted operations of a strawberry-only export flights to Singapore since December 2020.
The flights ran at a frequency of four times a week for five months, totalling 88 flights overall, and successfully managed to export some 960 tons of strawberries via this method, around 91% of total strawberry exports to Singapore.
Overall, the value of strawberry exports to Singapore increased from around US$12.5 mln between December 2019 and April 2020 to around US$15.2 mln from December 2020 to April 2021.
Banking on this successful pilot, the ministry now plans to expand its premium export market targets to include flights to more countries in Asia. “In the future, we also look to secure the premium markets in major target markets such as Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam this way," said a ministry statement.
Source: foodnavigator-asia.com
