Vietnam shrimp exporters 2026: the list, and who to rule out

You can pull together a list of Vietnamese shrimp exporters for 2026 in ten minutes. What counts is what you do with it before you sign. A container shipped with an EUR.1 certificate enters the EU at 0% duty under the EVFTA. Without one, frozen shrimp (HS code 0306 17) pays 12%. Only an exporter who has that paperwork under control belongs on your shortlist. So yes, I'll give you names, but more importantly I'll give you the scorecard we use at EMG Seafood to rule out the wrong ones.

Here are the five tests, in the order we run them: who makes the list, how to tell a factory from a middleman, what the Mekong market means for your order, and the exact lines to write into the contract.

Which Vietnamese shrimp exporters belong on a serious list in 2026?

The Vietnamese shrimp exporters that come up most often in European tenders are clustered in the Mekong Delta: Ca Mau, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu and An Giang, plus Thuan Phuoc in Da Nang for central Vietnam. No public list can replace an audit, because capacity, approvals and customer bases shift every season.

Which names come up most often?

The table below covers six companies you will run into in any Vietnamese shrimp sourcing exercise. It isn't a ranking, and it certainly isn't a recommendation. It's a starting point for your own checks, with the first thing I would verify for each one.

The last row shows the trap in any list: a big name in exports tells you nothing about how strong a company is in shrimp. A well-known exporter isn't necessarily a shrimp exporter.

If you're preparing a first container, cross-check this list against our guide on buying shrimp direct from the factory, which explains why so few suppliers really are.

Why a list isn't enough: factory, trader or partner?

An exporter isn't necessarily a factory. It's a company licensed to sell abroad, which may process the product itself or resell what other sites produce. That difference shapes your margin, your traceability and your recourse if something goes wrong.

How do you tell a factory from a trader in three questions?

Start with the approval number. A site cleared to export to the European Union appears on the European Commission's list of approved establishments, which you can reach from the food.ec.europa.eu portal. Then insist that the number is printed on every carton, because the label of the producing factory has to be there.

Third question: who issues the invoice and the certificate of origin? A trader invoicing in its own name can easily have the product made in a factory whose name you will never see. We've already covered this choice in trader, factory or local partner, and the full checklist is in How to vet a shrimp supplier in Vietnam.

If the supplier won't name the factory, the conversation ends there.

Which certifications should you require without being dazzled?

A site exporting to the EU must at minimum run a HACCP plan and hold EU approval. BRC or IFS for the plant and ASC or BAP for the farm are bonuses, and they aren't interchangeable: ASC and BAP don't guarantee the same thing, and a factory certificate says nothing about the farm the raw material comes from.

I hold a firm view on this. I'd rather work with a factory that has no prestigious label but can trace every lot back to its pond than with a certified site that buys its raw material on the spot market. A Vietnam Today video on the circular economy makes the point indirectly: its speakers say export markets now demand, on top of quality, lower emissions and full traceability of inputs.

What does the Mekong market mean for your 2026 shrimp order?

In 2026, the Mekong Delta shrimp market is being pulled by two opposing buyers: the big export plants, which want shrimp at 20 to 80 pieces per kilo, and China-focused plants, which pay more for small sizes. For a European importer, that feeds straight into the price and availability of raw material.

Why is China weighing on your sizes?

In its market review dated 2/3/2026, the Giá Thủy Sản channel describes a clear split. On one side, plants are hunting for large shrimp and pushing their buying prices down. On the other, plants producing for China are chasing shrimp at 90 to 120 pieces per kilo and are willing to pay more. In Soc Trang, one exporter raised its price on 40-count and larger, while another company was cutting it.

The same video points to a regional price gap. For the same 50-count per kilo, fresh whiteleg shrimp reaches 145,000 VND in Soc Trang against around 120,000 VND in Bac Lieu or Ca Mau, a gap of roughly 21%. According to the video, Minh Phu was only buying 10 to 15 tonnes that day, and other plants even less, which is keeping prices afloat. Black tiger shrimp remains scarce: 230,000 VND per kilo for live 30-count.

Another video, in Vietnamese and with a poor-quality transcript, reports that China may have overtaken the United States as the top export market for Vietnamese shrimp, with EU growth hard to forecast from 2026 onwards. I cite it with caution: the exact figures aren't usable, but the direction of travel matches the Mekong review.

What's the impact on landed price at Le Havre or Antwerp?

Your exposure depends on your size. If you buy 31/40 or larger, Chinese demand barely touches you directly. If you're after 71/90 or 90/120 for processing, you're competing with buyers ready to pay more. The size and price-per-kilo table in our article on shrimp sizes from U10 to 80/100 gives you the grid to turn those gaps into a cost per kilo.

These upstream gaps feed into the FOB Ho Chi Minh City price, then into your landed cost at Le Havre or Antwerp. To understand how that works, read FOB, CIF or DDP: which Incoterm to choose. Customs duty comes down to one document: the EUR.1 certificate under the EVFTA, which you can check on the European Commission's Access2Markets portal.

What to write into your spec sheet before you sign

A shrimp import specification is the document that puts numbers on what the factory commits to deliver: size, tolerance, glazing, origin, certificates and inspections. Without those lines, no exporter list protects you, because any dispute will turn on what wasn't written down.

Which lines should you require from the exporter, with figures?

Here are the lines we ask suppliers to sign, to be adjusted for your product:

• Size and tolerance: for example 31/40 pieces per pound, with a maximum out-of-size percentage written into the contract (we cap it at 5%).
• Glazing: no more than 10% of gross weight, with a guaranteed net drained weight, covered in our article on glazing rates.
• EU approval: the producing establishment's number on every carton and on the health certificate.
• Origin: an EUR.1 per lot, issued before shipment, to secure 0% duty.
• Traceability: source pond or farm per lot, plus an ASC or BAP certificate if you've required one.
• Inspection: pre-loading inspection by a third party or by our team, followed by supervision of container stuffing.

On the commercial side, our offer is FOB Ho Chi Minh City, with an MOQ of one 20-foot container (mixed products possible), a 20% deposit and the 80% balance by CAD. For a line-by-line breakdown, request an FOB quote by size and format, with a reply within 48 hours: you'll get a price per product rather than a generic range.

What inspection happens once the container arrives?

On arrival, the container goes through the border control post before release for free circulation. What that means for your timeline is covered in the SIVEP inspection at Le Havre. You have nothing to worry about as long as the approval number, the EUR.1 and the health certificate match the cartons.

Verdict: which exporters to approve, trial or rule out?

Approve: an exporter that names its factory, provides its EU approval number, agrees to put size tolerance and glazing in the contract, and allows inspection before loading. Rule out: any supplier that refuses one of these points, however prominent its name on a list.

Should you go through a direct exporter from the very first container?

Worth trialling on a first container, yes, if you already buy roughly one container per quarter from a French importer or an Ecuadorian operator. Below that, the FOB terms, deposit and inspection outweigh the savings, and a partner on the ground remains the more sensible choice.

So I don't buy into the "ten names and the cheapest wins" approach. What sourcing has taught me: the list gets the conversation started, the spec sheet is what protects your margin. The companies in the table are entry points to audit, not guarantees, and the real selection happens through the five tests above.

To plan your first order, EMG Seafood's supplier page explains how we select factories and inspect every container, and our guide to the timeline for a first container sets out the cash-flow deadlines.