Before starting a company 15 years ago selling the world’s smelliest fruit, Eric Chan had a well-paying job writing code for satellites and robots. His family and friends were perplexed when he changed careers.
The fruit, durian, has long been part of the local cultures of Southeast Asia, where it is grown in abundance. A single durian is usually the size of a rugby ball and can give off such a powerful odor that it is banned from most hotels. When Mr Chan launched his start-up in his native Malaysia, durians were cheap and often sold from the back of trucks.
Then, China took a liking to durian in a big way.
Last year, the value of Southeast Asia’s durian exports to China was $6.7 billion, a twelve-fold increase from $550 million in 2017. China buys virtually all of the durians exported worldwide, according to United Nations data. The largest exporting country by far is Thailand; Malaysia and Vietnam are the other best sellers.
Today, businesses are growing rapidly – one Thai company plans an IPO this year – and some durian farmers have become millionaires. Mr. Chan is one of them. Seven years ago, he sold a majority share of his company, specializing in the production of durian paste for cookies, ice cream and even pizza, for the equivalent of $4.5 million, almost 50 times his initial investment.
“Everyone makes a lot of money,” Mr. Chan said of the once-poor durian farmers in Raub, a small town 90 minutes from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “They rebuilt their houses out of wood and brick. And they can afford to send their children abroad to study at university.
Farmers in Southeast Asia’s durian orchards say they don’t remember the Chinese craze.
The boom in durian exports is a measure of the power of Chinese consumers in the global economy, even as, by other measures, the continent’s economy is struggling. When an increasingly wealthy country of 1.4 billion people gets a taste for something, entire regions of Asia are reshaped to meet demand.
In Vietnam, state media reported last month that farmers were cutting down coffee plants to make way for durian. The area of durian orchards in Thailand has doubled over the past decade. In Malaysia, the hill jungles outside Raub are being razed and terraced to make way for plantations that will satisfy China’s thirst for fruit.
“I think durian will be the new economic boom for Malaysia,” said Mohamad Sabu, the country’s agriculture minister.
With so much money at stake, the race to plant more trees has created tensions. Land disputes have arisen over durian orchards. Some roadside orchards are surrounded by coils of barbed wire. “Thieves will be prosecuted,” read a sign outside an orchard in Raub, with a drawing of handcuffs.
China is not just a buyer. Chinese investment has flowed into Thailand’s durian packaging and logistics sector. Chinese interests already control about 70 percent of durian wholesale and logistics activities, according to Aat Pisanwanich, a Thai international trade expert. Thai durian wholesale companies could “disappear in the near future,” he said at a news conference in May.
Durian is to fruit what truffles are to mushrooms: pound for pound, the fruit has become one of the most expensive on the planet. Depending on the variety, a single durian can sell for anywhere from $10 to hundreds of dollars.
But Chinese demand, which has increased prices fifteenfold over the past decade, has frustrated consumers in Southeast Asia, who are seeing durians transform from an abundant fruit growing in the wild and in orchards. villages to a luxury product intended for export.
Countries export a fruit that is an integral part of their identity and culture, particularly in Malaysia, where it serves as a unifying national icon among its many ethnic groups. “God made us want to eat durian,” said Hishamuddin Rais, a Malaysian film director and political activist.
Eating a whole durian, which for most people is too rich and filling to do alone, is often a social event in Southeast Asia. Opening a durian, which requires a very sharp knife or machete, is festive and brings friends together in the same way that sharing a bottle of fine wine does in other cultures. Mr Hishamuddin pointed out that a traditional expression states that it is tragic if a Malaysian does not like durian. The fruit is even embedded in the country’s financial lexicon: the Malay word for a windfall is durian runtuh, a term that offers the joyous image of durians collapsing to the ground.
China’s rise is reshaping the durian supply chain. It is relatively easy to deliver the fruit on the back of a truck to regional destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore or Bangkok. But shipping it to Guangzhou, Beijing and beyond, especially when the fruit is ripe and tasty, can be perilous. The fruit’s powerful odor may resemble a gas leak.
One of many examples of durian-induced emergencies occurred in 2019, when a Boeing 767 jet took off from Vancouver, British Columbia, with a cargo of durians in the hold. According to a report from Canadian regulators, pilots and crew “noticed a strong odor throughout the aircraft” shortly after takeoff. Fearing a problem with the plane, the pilots put on their oxygen masks and told air traffic controllers that they needed to land urgently. Once on the ground, the durian was discovered to be responsible for the foul odor.
Malaysia tried to solve the transportation problem by freezing the fruit before shipping. One of the pioneers of the process was Anna Teo, a former flight attendant who noticed during her travels that durian was not available overseas.
She quit her airline job and experimented with cryogenic freezing techniques in a rented warehouse, transporting her children to durian farms on weekends. She found that freezing not only lessened the smell of the fruit, but also extended its shelf life.
Today, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Ms Teo supervises more than 200 employees at the company she founded, Hernan, which exports frozen durian as well as mochi and other durian products.
Thailand, on the other hand, has been shipping fresh durian in refrigerated containers for many years. Thailand’s durian industry is centered in Chanthaburi province, near the border with Cambodia. During peak harvest season, May and June, piles of durian are everywhere.
About 1,000 shipping containers of durian leave Chanthaburi’s packing plants every day, creating traffic jams that rival Bangkok’s manic intersections. Some containers are loaded onto what Thai media calls the Durian Train, a freight rail service that connects Thailand and China using tracks that China built for a high-speed train.
Due to high Chinese demand, containers often return empty to Thailand – only to be quickly reloaded with more durian bound for China.
Jiaoling Pan, operations director of Speed Inter Transport, a Bangkok-based company that uses American-made refrigerated containers to ship durian, said two-thirds of its containers came back empty.
In its packaging factory, the durians are passed under a laser which engraves a serial number on the skin of each fruit. Chinese retailers want to be able to trace any bad fruit back to its orchard.
Ms. Pan was born in Nanning, southern China, and went to university in Thailand. She stayed after falling in love with durian, which she had never seen before. She compared her obsession with durian to an addiction.
“Actually, last night at 3 a.m. I ate a durian,” Ms. Pan said cheerfully between calls from Chinese customers looking for empty shipping containers.
Around the corner from his business is 888 Platinum Fruits, a company that specializes in durian and plans to list on the Thai stock exchange this year, a first for the durian industry.
Natakrit Eamskul, general manager of 888 Platinum Fruits, gave an idea of the growth of the industry in Chanthaburi: Twenty years ago, the province had 10 durian packing factories – today there are 600.
In Chanthaburi, signs of durian wealth are everywhere: modern houses and new hospitals. A shopping center, opened two years ago, hosted a car show in April.
“When you come from another province and you come here, you realize that the durian farmers are very, very rich,” said Abhisit Meechai, a car dealer who on a recent afternoon was selling MG vehicles, the venerable British brand. owned by SAIC Motor, a Chinese automobile manufacturer.
“Never judge a book by its cover,” Mr. Abhisit said of his clients who are durian farmers. “They come with dirty clothes and dirty hands. But they pay for their car in cash.”
Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Thailand. Read you contributed to the Shanghai research.