Thailand fresh produce export calendar

Roughly March to August, in volume from April. The eastern orchards — Chanthaburi, Rayong and Trat — open the season and the southern provinces carry the back half of it, so the country ships for considerably longer than any one growing region does.

Peak durian is an event rather than a busy stretch. Volume concentrates hard, prices move within the week, and a container that arrives late arrives into a different market than the one it was sold into. On a lane of four to eight days that risk is real, and the days go at the terminals rather than at sea.

Roughly April to August, on almost the same weeks as durian and often in the same booking. That is the useful thing to know about it: mangosteen is at its best and cheapest exactly when vessel space out of Laem Chabang is at its tightest.

The rind does most of the work of keeping the fruit, but it hardens as it dries and a hard rind reads as old fruit to a buyer who has not opened one. Humidity in transit matters as much as temperature on this one.

The natural crop out of the north — Chiang Mai and Lamphun — runs July and August, opening in June. The second band, from November into February, is the off-season crop: growers flower it deliberately with a potassium chlorate treatment, and it is what supplies the weeks around Chinese New Year.

The two crops behave like different products commercially. Main-crop longan is plentiful and soft on price in the weeks Vietnam is also shipping; off-season fruit exists because demand is high enough to pay for it, and it is priced accordingly.

There is no closed window. Thai aromatic coconut is cut every week of the year, and the peak band is where yields and demand firm together through the hot dry months rather than where the crop starts and stops.

What decides arrival quality is preparation rather than timing. The nut is trimmed, wrapped or shrink-filmed for export, and how that was done sets how long it holds far more than the month it left in. On a lane of under a week that is a solved problem; the same fruit sent long-haul is a different proposition.