TAIPEI (TVBS News) — A southern Taiwanese city is making inroads into the lucrative Singapore market with its premium tropical fruit, officials announced Monday (April 14). Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) revealed ambitious export plans following the city's successful showing at last week's Food & Beverage Trade Show in Asia (FHA), where regional buyers placed orders for more than 500 metric tons of Taiwanese produce.
Mayor Huang touted the exceptional characteristics of pineapples from Tainan's Guanmiao District (關廟區), a region renowned for its distinctive acidic red sandy soil that creates ideal growing conditions. The fruit, which requires a two-year cultivation period under stringent safety protocols, benefits from the area's abundant sunshine and superior drainage. Huang expressed confidence that Singaporean consumers would become loyal customers after experiencing the pineapples' superior flavor and quality when they debut in the city-state's major supermarket chains.
The export initiative is being facilitated by Natural House (自然屋), a prominent agricultural distributor that has been developing Singapore markets since 2023. Company representatives reported successfully introducing Tainan's premium produce to Singapore's dominant supermarket chains, which together control more than 80% of the city-state's grocery retail sector. Initial product presentations have generated enthusiastic responses from Singapore's major food retailers.
Weather challenges have slightly altered the export timeline, with Natural House confirming that unusual cold weather earlier in the year postponed the Guanmiao pineapples' harvest by approximately two weeks. The inaugural shipment of six metric tons is scheduled to reach Singapore this Saturday, launching an aggressive market entry campaign featuring 30 in-store sampling events across 10 supermarkets during the following weekend. The distributor has outlined an ambitious scaling strategy, with plans to transition to regular weekly container shipments as consumer demand develops in the Singapore market. ★