Before Eric Chan started a company selling the world’s smelliest fruit 15 years ago, he had a high-paying job writing code for satellites and robots. When he changed jobs, his family and friends were perplexed.
The fruit, long revered in local cultures across Southeast Asia, is grown in abundance — each one is about the size of a rugby ball and has such a strong smell that most hotels ban them. When Chan started out in his native Malaysia, durian was cheap and often sold off the backs of trucks.
China has since developed a huge taste for durian.
Durian exports from Southeast Asia to China were worth $6.7 billion last year, up 12-fold from $550 million in 2017. China buys almost all of the world’s durian exports, according to U.N. data. The largest exporter is Thailand, with Malaysia and Vietnam also topping other exporters.
Now business is expanding so fast that one Thai company is planning an initial public offering later this year.Some durian farmers have become millionaires, including Mr. Chan. Seven years ago, he sold a controlling stake in a company that specializes in making durian paste for cookies, ice cream and pizza for $4.5 million, nearly 50 times what he originally invested.
“They’re making good money,” Chan said of the once-poor durian farmers in Raub, a small town 90 minutes from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. “They’ve rebuilt their homes from wood to brick, and they can afford to send their children to college abroad.”
Durian farmers in Southeast Asia say they can’t remember an outbreak as severe as the one in China.
The surge in durian exports is a measure of the power of Chinese consumers in the global economy, even as the mainland’s economy struggles by other measures. When an increasingly wealthy nation of 1.4 billion people gets a taste of something, the whole of Asia reorganizes to meet the demand.
In Vietnam, state media reported last month that farmers are cutting down coffee trees to grow durian. The area of durian plantations in Thailand has doubled in the past decade. In Malaysia, jungle in the hills outside Raub is being cleared and terraced to make way for plantations to meet China’s demand for durian.
“I think durian will be the new economic boom for Malaysia,” said the country’s Agriculture Minister Mohamad Sabu.
With so much money at stake, the race to plant more trees has created tensions. Land disputes have erupted over durian orchards; some roadside orchards are surrounded by barbed wire. Outside Raub’s orchard there is a sign with a picture of handcuffs that reads “thieves will be prosecuted.”
China isn’t the only buyer. Chinese investment is flowing into Thailand’s durian packaging and logistics business. Chinese companies already control about 70 percent of the durian wholesale and logistics business, according to Art Pisanwanich, a Thai international trade expert. Thai durian wholesale companies “may disappear in the near future,” he said at a press conference in May.
Durian is to fruits what truffles are to mushrooms: Price per pound, it’s one of the most expensive fruits on the planet. Depending on the variety, a single durian can sell for anywhere between $10 and several hundred dollars.
But Chinese demand, which has seen prices rise 15-fold over the past decade, is irritating consumers in Southeast Asia who see durian, a fruit that grows abundantly in the wild and in village orchards, being transformed into a luxury item for export.
Countries export the fruit, which is crucial to their identity and culture. In Malaysia in particular, the durian has become a national symbol that unites many ethnic groups. “God gave us our appetite for durian,” said Hishamuddin Rais, a Malaysian film director and political activist.
Eating a whole durian, though too rich and filling for most people to do alone, is often a social event in Southeast Asia. The act of opening the fruit, which requires a very sharp knife or machete, creates a festive atmosphere and encourages solidarity among friends, much like sharing a bottle of fine wine in other cultures. Hishammuddin noted that there is a traditional expression that describes Malays’ lack of fondness for durian as a tragedy. The fruit has even been incorporated into the country’s financial vocabulary: the Malay word for “windfall” is “durian runtuh,” conjuring the joyous image of a durian collapsing to the ground.
The surge in durians in China is causing changes in the durian supply chain. It’s relatively easy to load durians onto trucks and transport them to regional destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Bangkok. But shipping them to Guangzhou, Beijing and elsewhere is risky, especially when the fruit is ripe and at its tastiest. The fruit’s strong smell can resemble that of a gas leak.
There have been numerous examples of durian-related emergencies, including one in 2019 when a Boeing 767 took off from Vancouver, British Columbia, with durian in the cargo hold. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot and crew “noticed a strong odor throughout the aircraft,” according to a Canadian regulator’s report. Fearing there was something wrong with the plane, the pilot donned his oxygen mask and notified air traffic controllers that they needed to make an emergency landing. Once on the ground, the odor was determined to be durian.
Malaysia has tried to solve its transportation problems by freezing the fruit before shipping, a method pioneered by former flight attendant Anna Teo, who noticed durian was hard to come by overseas during her travels.
She quit her job at an airline, rented a warehouse to experiment with cryogenic freezing techniques, and took her children on weekend trips to durian farms, where she found that freezing not only reduced the fruit’s smell but also extended its shelf life.
Today, Teo oversees more than 200 employees at his company, Helnan, based outside Kuala Lumpur, which exports frozen durian as well as rice cakes and other durian products.
In contrast, Thailand has long shipped fresh durian in refrigerated containers. The country’s durian industry is centered in Chanthaburi province, close to the Cambodian border, where piles of durian can be seen everywhere during peak harvest season in May and June.
About 1,000 containers of durian are shipped out across Chanthaburi every day, causing durian traffic jams that rival Bangkok’s busy intersections. Some of the containers are loaded onto what Thai media call “durian trains,” a freight rail service linking Thailand and China using tracks built by China for its high-speed rail line.
Demand from China is so high that containers often return empty to Thailand, only to be quickly reloaded with durians bound for China.
Jaolin Pang, chief operating officer of Bangkok-based Speed Inter Transport Co., which uses American-made refrigerated containers to transport durians, said two-thirds of its containers were returning empty.
At her packing house, the durians are passed under a laser that inscribes a serial number into the skin of each fruit: Chinese retailers hope to be able to trace any bad fruit back to the orchard.
Pan was born in Nanning, southern China, and moved to Thailand to attend university, but stayed after falling in love with the fruit, a fruit she had never seen before. She likens her obsession with durian to an addiction.
“I actually ate durian last night at 3am,” Pang said cheerfully in between calls from Chinese clients looking for empty shipping containers.
Just down the road from her shop is durian specialist 888 Platinum Fruit Co, which plans to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand this year, a first for the industry.
Natakrit Eemsukul, chief executive officer of 888 Platinum Fruit, gave a measure of the growth of the durian industry in Chanthaburi: “Twenty years ago there were 10 durian packing factories in the province, but now there are 600.”
In Chanthaburi, evidence of durian wealth is everywhere: modern housing, a new hospital, and a shopping mall that opened two years ago hosted a car show in April.
“When you come here from other provinces, you realise that durian farmers are very wealthy,” said Abhisit Meechai, a car dealer on a recent afternoon selling cars from MG, a venerable British brand owned by Chinese automaker SAIC Motor.
“Don’t judge them by their appearance,” Mr Abhisit said of his durian farmers’ customers. “They come with dirty clothes and dirty hands, but they pay for the car in cash.”
Poipiti amatatum This is a report from Thailand. Li Yu Research collaboration from Shanghai.
