Chinese buyers snap up 20-tonne shipment of durian
All 20 tonnes of durian from Chanthaburi’s Khlung district were bought up within an hour of arriving in Shenzhen Airport on Wednesday, said Alongkorn Pollabutr, adviser to the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry.
“Chinese buyers chartered a Shenzhen Airlines plane to take the durians from Thailand to complete online orders,” Alongkorn, who also oversees the ministry’s fruit development and management board, said.
“The ministry aims to penetrate the online marketplace to bring Thai fruits to a wider group of customers,” he said.
Alongkorn said this news was first broken by local online media channels, “so the ministry contacted the Royal Farm Group, which runs the durian pre-ordering platform, to survey customer satisfaction and purchasing behaviour”, he said.
“We aim to find out which breed of durian they like the most and how the fruit’s size and sweetness affect demand in different provinces across China.
“With the instant success of the first 20-tonne lot of more than 10,000 durians, we plan to send another 20-tonne lot and hope they will be sold out in no time,” he added.