Two Vietnam Airlines flights carrying the first batches of Vietnamese lychees left Noi Bai International Airport to Japan early this morning of May 27.

The aircraft is preparing for the first batch of Bac Giang lychees exported to Japan on early morning of May 27. Photo: Vietnam Airlines

Nearly 10 tons of lychee, harvested in the northern province of Bac Giang, have been treated with methyl bromide fumigation were shipped to Japan in two flights namely VN310 from Hanoi to Narita and VN330 from Hanoi to Osaka. 

Vietnam Airlines used Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 for the work. These two are wide-body jets suitable for transporting a large quantity of perishable foods.

On May 26, twenty tons of lychees in the province’s Tan Yen district were exported to the East Asian market by Global Export and Import Foodstuff JSC, Bamboo International and Chanh Thu Export and Import Fruit Company.

At the ceremony of the shipment launching, Le Anh Duong, the Chairman of Bac Giang People's Committee, said the locality has taken a range of drastic steps to ensure safe quality, food safety, and hygiene of the lychees amid complicated developments of the pandemic.

The provincial authorities and relevant units have actively built a plan on disease-free lychee production combining with synchronous measures, in which they have required local residents in the lychee growing area to not going out of the province, set up checkpoints to control people and vehicles entering lychee cultivation zones, and conducted medical inspection on lychee gardeners, truck drivers and their means of transport as well as workers.

As the number of infected cases having reached over 1,000, Bac Giang is now a pandemic cluster of the country. The provincial authorities have built scenarios for consuming lychees this year to gain the dual goal of ensuring the task of the Covid-19 prevention and control and the socio-economic development.

The province is scheduled to host a teleconference on June 8 to promote lychee consumption in 2021. The event will be connected to 29 locations worldwide.