The 10th edition of the Tainan International Mango Festival officially kicked off at Tsou Ma Lai Farm on July 2. Singapore Trade Office in Taipei Deputy Trade Representative Philip Ong and officials from the Taipei and Kaohsiung Offices of the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association were invited by the Tainan City Government to take part in the opening ceremony. The guests then toured local mango processing and exporting facilities. Hopefully, these tours will bring forth more overseas marketing opportunities for Tainan’s mangoes.
Tainan City Mayor Huang Wei-che pointed out that Tainan is Taiwan’s largest production area of improved variety mangoes. Irwin mangoes from Tainan have a strong sweet scent and are enjoyed by consumers worldwide. The city government has been actively promoting the export of Irwin mangoes recently. In addition to assisting producers in cultivating excellent mangoes for export, the local government also helped businesses upgrade their export cold chains, quality control and product processing capabilities, and other back-end channels. This industry tour aims to let our friends from Singapore and Japan’s agriculture and trade offices here in Taiwan learn more about the strengths and potential of Tainan’s mango industries.
After the opening ceremony, the foreign guests were directed to Taiwan’s very first mango processing plant set up with assistance from the government - LianXing Greenfruit Production Cooperative. The plant helps local producers sort and transport their mangoes, and employs advanced equipment to peel and bake mangoes into dried fruit snacks. The mango rinds are recycled via industry-research center collaboration projects to realize circular agriculture.
The next stop was Taiwan’s largest steaming plant - Tainan Agriculture Trading Co. It can steam 30 tons of fruit per day and reach between 300 and 400 tons every year. After the export mangoes are sorted, they are sent to the steaming plant to be steamed at 46.5 ℃ for 3.5 hours to sterilize the fruits and kill any remaining insect eggs; then the dried mangoes are cooled and graded, packaged, collected, and put into shipment containers.
Tainan City Government wishes to show our overseas friends that Tainan city has careful procedures in place to sterilize our dried fruit with steaming before exporting the products as well as the efforts of other related industries and hopefully expand the global market of Tainan’s mangoes.