Vietnam might be the most vividly colourful country in the world. The luminous white ao dai dresses worn by schoolgirls on bikes; the glinting gold of temple stupas; the searing reds and yellows of housefronts and market stalls; the rich, deep greens of the rice fields – taken together, the country seems to repose in its own eye-popping spectrum.
There’s a lot of fresh produce mixed into that palette, too, and Spinneys buys a great deal of it from The Fruit Republic: pink and white pomelos, white and red dragon fruit, limes, papaya, jackfruit – all grown, harvested and shipped by skilled workers wearing the company’s distinctive orange shirts. That particular colour was chosen to honour the Dutch origins of company founder, owner and managing director Siebe Van Wijk. And though Siebe is of Netherlandic stock, he was born and raised in Kenya.
“From a young age I knew I wanted to be in tropical agriculture,” he says today, standing at the edge of a dragon fruit farm in Long An Province – one of the most important and abundant production areas in Vietnam for that fruit. The farm itself is owned by one of 30 smallholders who form a cooperative that supplies Fruit Republic with premium-quality red and white-fleshed dragon fruit, thereby fulfilling Siebe’s very purpose in moving to Vietnam with his wife and creating the company more than 20 years ago.
“When I first came here, I just loved the people, they’re so energetic and optimistic. Our dream was to help smallholder farmers because we saw there was a lot of entrepreneurship and a real openness to new technology,” he says. Their initial consultancy was geared toward research and development for produce that included seafood, potatoes, chicken and corn.
Dragon fruits are a superfood
Siebe Van Wijk
But nobody seemed interested in fruit at the time and when I first tried a Vietnamese pomelo it was one of the nicest fruits I’d ever eaten. I thought, ‘this deserves to come onto the world market’. So, we started The Fruit Republic to develop exports out of Vietnam, while also catering to the domestic market, and the company grew from there.”
Two decades later, one of many new developments – and specific to Spinneys – is a shift from air freight to a two-week shipping programme that allows a panopoly of different fruits to be delivered in the same container. “So, every week, Spinneys will get a fresh arrival with yellow- and pink-flesh pomelo, loose and prepacked limes, young drinking coconuts, pineapples and all the dragon fruit colours,” says Siebe. The latter is widely consumed across Asia, and especially in China, but to many foreign shoppers it’s still relatively unfamiliar.
“Dragon fruit is a kind of superfood, with a lot of nutrients you don’t get in other fruits” says Siebe. “Lots of potassium, a bit like a banana, which has anti-aging effects. The red-flesh variety is a bit more sweet than the white, but they’re both quite fresh in taste, especially out of the fridge and very good in smoothies and fruit salads.”
Orange jackfruit has been another recent revelation for many international consumers, joining red dragon fruit in Spinneys’ new premium range, Discovery. Very few people buy them whole, explains Siebe, “because it’s a huge fruit and a lot of work to peel and cut yourself”. “So, we’ve developed a Freshcut range, starting with yellow jackfruit. If you’re trying it for the first time, yellow is best for the beginner and if you get addicted then you move on to the orange one, which is for real jackfruit lovers. Much stronger in taste and very sweet.”
A clever way of using water canals to transport limes through the fields
Huynh Van Quyen grows dragon fruit for The Fruit Republic
This ongoing boom in Vietnamese fruit has grown out of major changes made not so long ago, says Siebe. Economic development only really began in this country in the mid-1990s. At that time, most agricultural workers were rice farmers, and a widespread transition to fruit is still underway, with the active assistance of his company.
To illustrate, he shows the Spinneys team around a lime farm on wet and fertile lands between Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City that’s affiliated to The Fruit Republic. “There’s all this talent and energy in Vietnam, but a lot of things to be improved. Here in the Mekong Delta you’ve got 500,000 smallholder families now depending on fruit for their income, so what we do is help with production.” This site appears to be a beautiful working model of agricultural practice in the delta, with limes being transported by boat on narrow canals that run alongside the fields.
Initially, says Siebe, those new to this form of farming assumed planting the most possible trees would mean greater yields and bigger incomes. He explains, “But too many trees start competing for light and the branches grow up, not out, so you’ve got something more like a fruit forest than a farm. Now the spacing is good here, and our extension team is helping with these practices that ensure you grow more fruit from fewer trees.” The Fruit Republic consults with the farmers on growing without herbicides by covering their lands with grasses and composting from nutrient-rich rice husks that they used to burn in the old days. The company has also established one of the country’s first professional plant nurseries and introduced new root stocks to broaden and strengthen the limited native varieties, bolstering resistance to saltwater and certain diseases.
Fresh cut range of orange jackfruit
Jacques Van Zyl
Soil analysis is still a brand new technology in Vietnam and Siebe’s production specialists can now offer their farmers a laboratory sampling service that gives them a solid basis for “site-specific fertiliser programmes”, thus minimising chemical inputs across each crop. The Fruit Republic’s Farm Academy, meanwhile, is training smallholders – often husband-and-wife operations – to professionalise their business in line with the highest agricultural standards.
More experienced fruit farmers from overseas have relocated here to show them how it’s done. Jacques Van Zyl, for example, had been cultivating citrus in his native South Africa before moving to here as a production manager for The Fruit Republic, deploying his expertise on pomelos in particular. “Vietnam has a lot of fertile soil, clean water and the climate to cope with these citrus types,” says Jacques. “But pink pomelo is still a very difficult fruit to set, and I like a challenge.” Soil sampling, spray protocols and “a lot of pruning techniques” that he brought from South Africa seem to have worked a treat in this environment, and he believes the fruit is well worth those efforts. “It’s just the best tasting pomelo, sweet and very juicy,” he says. “I would choose the Vietnamese pink pomelo before any others in the world.”
The work of The Fruit Republic means the most to the company’s Vietnamese staff, who have seen this whole industry and their own careers blossom. Sourcing area supervisor Nguyen Thi Thu Ba is now the first female agronomist to take such a position and it is her privilege, she says “to help support the farmer and to bring this fruit to international consumers”. This is a common refrain among the women, who stand out among the green leaves and bright crops in their signature orange company shirts.
Back among the dragon fruit, sales director Nguyen Thi My Hiep makes the job sound like a kind of paradise. “It’s always peaceful on the farms, the farmers are cheerful and friendly and it’s very beautiful to see the fruit on the trees. We feel proud that people around the world can taste what we grow for them in Vietnam.”
Spinneys commercial produce manager
Neil Gibson says
At Spinneys we choose to work with producers who are dedicated to improving standards and educating growers. While improving practices, it is also important to respect traditions and work in harmony with the environment. The Fruit Republic is a great example of a company making a real difference in a developing economy. It is our chosen supplier of prepared exotic fruits and as such works to Global G.A.P. standards. Two particular favourites are the orange jackfruit and the red dragon fruit which adds a dramatic pop of colour to fruit platters.
Shop our premium Vietnamese produce
Spinneys sources fresh Vietnamese produce through The Fruit Republic
