A crew from Japan’s public broadcaster NHK visited a central Vietnamese province on Saturday to film the process of exporting Vietnam’s second tuna batch to the East Asian country.

Experts from Kato Hitoshi General Office (Kato Office), a Japanese importer, and Binh Dinh Fishery Joint Stock Company (Bidifisco) on Saturday performed close examination on a batch of tuna which was fished by fishermen in the central province of Binh Dinh with Japanese technology. 

Four local fishing vessels adopted Japanese technology and equipment for tuna hunting  and storing for export to Japan this time.

The four boats docked at a port in the provincial capital city of Quy Nhon with 100 tuna, of which seven with the best quality were picked by Kato Office for shipping to Japan for an auction.

The batch were properly packaged and shipped to Japan.

A crew from Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) also arrived in Binh Dinh to film the process for a television program to introduce the export model.

Workers are pictured transporting a tuna to a freezer. Photo: Tuoi Tre.

The first batch of tuna caught by Binh Dinh’s fishermen using Japanese technology was sold out in early August last year at an auction in the central fish market of Osaka City in Japan, the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development said earlier.

With an average quote of 1,200 Japanese yen (US$11.76) per kilogram, the price of the nine tuna caught by two anglers was about three to four times higher than their current local price of around VND60,000-80,000 ($2.82-3.76) per kilogram.

Of the nine fish weighing 448 kilograms in total, one was bought at 2,100 Japanese yen ($20.58) per kilogram. Another sold for only 250 Japanese yen ($2.45) per kilogram as it had below-par quality, according to the department.

Domestic tuna prices hit the lowest rate of VND35,000-50,000 ($1.17-2.35) per kilogram in May last year due to surplus supply.

The price was low partly because almost all tuna sold locally were hunted using traditional methods which reduce the quality of the fish when they came ashore.

Japanese experts observed in August last year that the quality of Vietnam’s first batch of tuna is not different from the same kind of tuna sold in the Japanese market.

Kato Office and Bidifisco then inked a contract enabling the latter to export tuna caught by local fishermen using Japanese technology to Japan via the former.

The deal makes Kato Office a Bidifisco representative in Japan, which will put Binh Dinh tuna on sale at the auction centers and seafood store chains of Kato Office’s partners in Japan.

From late July to early August 2014, local vessels caught 54 tuna, with an average weight of 40-50 kilograms each.

Workers are seen hoisting a tuna from a fishing boat's freezing cellar. Photo: Tuoi Tre.