Hyundai Corporation raises strong sales from mango imports

[Courtesy of Hyundai Corporation]

Hyundai Corporation, a trading house of South Korea’s Hyundai Group, has seen its quarterly earnings surpass last year’s performance in the first quarter, thanks to the booming imports of Cambodian mangoes to Korea.

Demand for imported fruits such as mangoes has been on a rise amid skyrocketing fruit prices in Korea.

The volume of Cambodian mango imports by Hyundai Corporation in the first quarter has exceeded the total imports of 2023, which was 300 tons.

The achievement is attributed to the steep increase in Korean fruit prices.

According to Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT), the retail price of one apple has risen to 3,050 won as of Wednesday, up 41 percent from the previous year.

A significant factor contributing to Hyundai Corporation’s achievement is also the government’s decision to temporarily reduce the import tariff on mangoes from 24 percent to zero percent from January.

Hyundai Corporation ventured into the mango business in 2014 by acquiring a 2.6 square kilometer farm near Phnom Penh, Cambodia, an area comparable in size to Yeouido in Seoul.

The company made its first mango import to Korea in 2020, but the business faced a temporary halt for about a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

For this year, the anticipated harvest from Hyundai Corporation’s mango farm in Cambodia is around 500 tons.

The company has set an ambitious long-term production goal of increasing its mango yield to 10,000 tons annually, which would be a twenty-fold increase from the current output.