Eleven questions to ask a Vietnamese fruit supplier
You receive fifteen or twenty offers a week from Vietnam and Thailand, and they all read the same. These eleven questions separate the companies that grow fruit from the companies that resell it — usually within the first three answers.
We are a supplier writing this, so read it accordingly. But every question below is one we would want a buyer to ask us, and the reason we are comfortable publishing them is that a trading house cannot answer most of them at all.
About the fruit itself
1 · Which groves does this fruit come from, and can you name them?
A grower answers with a district and a grower code. A trader answers with a province, or changes the subject to volume. There is no middle ground here.
2 · Given a lot number, how long does it take to tell me which grove it came from?
The best single test in this list. Traceability that takes a week is not traceability. It should take minutes, because either the record exists or it does not.
3 · How many hours from harvest to cold room?
The answer determines shelf life more than any other factor, and only a supplier who controls the route can answer it. See what actually shortens shelf life.
About compliance
4 · Are your residue limits set against my market or against yours?
Vietnamese limits and EU limits are frequently not the same number. A supplier testing against the wrong one will pass every internal check and still be stopped at your border. See what the EU's shift on residue limits means.
5 · Can you show me the spray record for a specific grove, for a specific cycle?
Not a certificate — the actual record. If it arrives in a week as a pile of scans, residue control happens at the end, not in the grove.
6 · Which certifications are current today, and which are in progress?
Every supplier lists both together. Ask them to separate the two, then ask for scans with numbers and expiry dates. A supplier who tells you plainly that something has lapsed is worth more than one who sends an expired scan and hopes.
7 · Have you ever had a detention or a border notification?
Ask directly. A clean record is worth stating; a supplier who has had one and explains what changed afterwards is often a better partner than one who has simply never shipped enough volume to find out.
About capacity and continuity
8 · Do you own the plant, or do you buy from one?
Both models can work. What matters is that the supplier says which one they are. A company that owns plants and also runs a partner network should be able to explain exactly how the standard travels into the partner factories — audits, protocol transfer, trial lots, ongoing verification. If the answer is "we work with good partners," there is no system behind it. See how our partner network works.
9 · What do you ship in the months when your main season is closed?
The single most revealing question about seasonality. A supplier who answers "the same as every other month" is buying from someone else. See how off-season durian works.
10 · What happens if a container is short at loading?
You are asking whether they will tell you, or quietly downgrade the grade to fill the space. The honest answer to this question is worth more than a two percent price advantage.
About the relationship
11 · Who am I actually talking to?
An agent, a sales desk, or someone who can walk into the grove. It changes how fast problems get solved, and problems will happen — the difference between suppliers is not whether things go wrong, it is what the next twelve hours look like when they do.
Where we stand. A grower's export company in Bến Tre — our own farms and plants, plus a vetted network of partner factories on the same protocols. No FDA import detention, no RASFF notification, not once.