Japanese firm seeks Cambodian rice supplier

A Japanese firm is now scouring Cambodia for suppliers of fragrant rice, which it intends to ship home, where demand for Cambodian rice is on the rise, an official of the Cambodia Rice Federation said.

Moul Sarith, CRF secretary-general, yesterday told Khmer Times that representatives of Tanaka Food Industry Corporation have approached his organisation in search of a partner that will supply them with Cambodian fragrant rice, whose reputation abroad continues to improve after a local brand took home this year’s World’s Best Rice award.

Mr Sarith said that it is the first time the Japanese company looks for rice suppliers in the Kingdom. He said it imports around 100 tonnes of rice from Thailand a year.

Japonica rice continues to be the most demanded variety in the Japanese market, but fragrant rice’s share of that demand – 30 percent – is also significant, he added. He said farmers in the Kingdom are now beginning to plant Japonica to feed the Chinese, Korean and Japanese markets, but that this is being done at a small scale.

“The company has not told us how much they are interested in importing. So far, they just want us to arrange meetings with local suppliers, which is what we are doing,” Mr Sarith said.

The Japanese government has a rice quota in place that limits its imports of the product to just 4,000 tonnes a year, Mr Sarith explained.

“If Japan increases its rice quota, the Cambodian government or CRF would negotiate with Japan to increase our shipments of rice,” Mr Sarith said.

“We could potentially grow more of the Japonica variety if demand from Japan were to increase,” he said.

Read more...