Northern Son La province launched ‘Son La Longan and Safe Farm Produce Week 2019’ at Big C Thang Long, Hanoi, on July 19.

This is the second year the event has been organised by the provincial People’s Committee and Big C Thang Long (of the Central Group Vietnam) to promote the province’s agricultural products, with longan being the key fruit to Hanoi and other neighbouring localities’ customers.

Twenty-one local enterprises with 30 booths are displaying their products, many of them have obtained safe food standards such as VietGap and GlobalGap including longan, custard apple, mango, passion fruit, avocado, banana, red flesh dragon fruit and other farm produce.

Building a good trade marketing campaign will help provinces not only increase sales of their agricultural products but effectively build their product brands, said Vu Duc Thuan, deputy director of the Son La province’s Department of Planning and Investment.

Thuan said since last year, the province had built a trade promotion campaign to introduce the locality’s safe agricultural products which had seen positive results.

He added that farmers now have paid attention to fruit preservation, packaging and origin traceability which meets export standards to the EU and China.

Most of the products in the Son La Longan and Safe Farm Produce Week 2019 could be traced in terms of origin of production, he said.

The total area of longan cultivation in the province increased to more than 15,000 hectares this year, a 2.5-fold increase compared to 2015, with output expected at 73,000 tonnes. Longan exports this year is estimated at nearly 10,000 tonnes (fresh and processed fruit) worth about 10.6 million USD.

Besides longan, the province has cooperated with Big C to organise many weekly trade activities to promote other agricultural products such as strawberry, plum, mango and Da river fish. Sales of the province’s agricultural products at Big C achieved a stunning growth rate of 20 times, data of the supermarket chain showed.

Apart from Big C, the province also introduced its products in other modern retail chains including Lotte, Hapro and Co-opmart.