Bangladesh's Fruit Exports Collapse 76 Percent as Shipping Costs Triple and Cold Chains Fail

A year ago, Bangladesh's fruit exporters were celebrating a record quarter. This year, the same quarter has turned into one of the sharpest reversals the sector has seen, earnings from fruit exports fell 76 percent year on year in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, from $30.86 million to just $7.38 million, according to Export Promotion Bureau data. Exporters and officials point to a tangled mix of shipping disruptions in the Middle East and long standing weaknesses in cold storage and compliance that finally caught up with the industry at the same time.

• Fruit export earnings fell 76 percent year on year in July to September, from $30.86 million to $7.38 million, EPB data show.
• Sea freight rates for key shipments jumped from $2,000-$2,200 to $7,000-$8,000, as disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz squeezed shipping capacity.
• Mangoes and jackfruits, Bangladesh's leading fruit exports, along with tender coconut and cabbage shipments to the Middle East, were among the hardest hit.
• The crash follows a record year, fruit exports had jumped 135 percent to $50.08 million in the same period last fiscal year.

From a record year to a crash, almost overnight

The whiplash is the real story here. In the July to October period of last fiscal year, combined vegetable, fruit and spice exports reached $102.48 million, up 64 percent on the year before, with fruit exports alone hitting a record $50.08 million. Mohammad Monsur, general secretary of the Bangladesh Fruits, Vegetables and Allied Products Exporters Association, credited that surge at the time to lower air freight charges and stronger supply capacity. Twelve months on, freight costs have gone the other way entirely, and fruit earnings have cratered.

Why freight suddenly got so expensive

Disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for a large share of Middle East bound shipping, have squeezed vessel capacity and sent rates climbing. Officials at the Department of Agricultural Extension's Plant Quarantine Wing say sea freight for key routes has roughly tripled or quadrupled, from $2,000 to $2,200 per shipment to $7,000 to $8,000. Air freight, the usual fallback for perishable fruit, has not absorbed the slack either, cargo space is limited and flight schedules to key markets remain irregular, leaving exporters with few affordable ways to move fresh produce quickly.

Specific shipments were hit directly. Tender coconuts bound for Oman and cabbage shipments to the Maldives were both delayed by the shipping complications, exporters say, while mango and jackfruit exports to the European Union, the United Kingdom and Middle Eastern markets including the UAE and Saudi Arabia slowed sharply. The squeeze is not new, processed food exporters including Square Food & Beverage and Bombay Sweets reported containers stranded at Chattogram port as early as March this year, when the Hormuz disruptions first began, so this quarter's fruit numbers are less a sudden shock than the compounding effect of a shipping problem that has now dragged on for months.

The older problems freight costs exposed

Exporters and agricultural officials agree the shipping squeeze did not create Bangladesh's fruit export weaknesses on its own, it exposed problems that were already there. Hafizur Rahman, a fruit exporter and association member, and Onup Das, director of Alexa Trading Corporation, point to a familiar list: limited awareness of traceability requirements among growers, very little contract farming to guarantee consistent quality, and farmers who rarely keep records of pesticide and fertiliser use, which makes it hard to prove produce is free of chemical residue when European or Gulf buyers ask.

Behind the farm gate, the cold chain remains thin. Cold storage capacity is inadequate and the chain from farms to packing houses is weak, so losses from spoilage eat into already slim margins. There are too few vapour heat treatment and hot water treatment facilities, both required to clear fruit for export to several markets, and laboratory testing for pesticide residue is both scarce and expensive. Even packaging adds cost, since high import duties on carton making materials push up the price of something as basic as a shipping box.

A sector that still has room to grow

Category	FY23	FY24	FY25	FY26 (Jul-Oct)
Fruits	$0.18m	$5.06m	$21.35m	$50.08m
Vegetables	$15.26m	$55.95m	$21.70m	$31.94m
Spices	$12.03m	$16.05m	$19.30m	$20.46m

That table, drawn from last fiscal year's four month figures, shows how quickly fruit exports can move when conditions line up, growing from essentially nothing in FY23 to a $50 million quarter by FY26. Towfiqul Islam Khan, additional director of research at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, argues the underlying fix has to be agricultural productivity, not just freight rates, since Bangladesh cannot out export its way to consistent growth without first fixing yield and quality at the farm level.

The fixes that do not depend on shipping lanes

Several of the problems exporters describe are solvable without waiting for freight rates to normalise. Plant Quarantine Wing officials say building more vapour heat treatment and hot water treatment capacity near major airports and ports would let more fruit clear export inspections without relying on a single bottleneck facility. Expanding contract farming, where an exporter pre-agrees quality and volume with a group of growers, would also address the traceability gap that European and Gulf buyers increasingly demand, since a contracted grower has a direct incentive to keep spray and fertiliser records rather than treating them as paperwork for someone else's benefit. None of this is cheap or fast, but unlike a shipping disruption half a world away, it is within Bangladesh's own control.

What it means for growers and exporters

For exporters, the immediate squeeze means renegotiating contracts around freight costs that can double between booking and shipment, a volatility that smaller firms without reserves struggle to absorb. For farmers supplying export grade mango, jackfruit or coconut, the lesson from this quarter is that export income can vanish as fast as it appeared if logistics and compliance are not built to withstand a shock like a shipping lane disruption half a world away. Diversifying into markets reachable by cheaper, shorter sea or land routes, rather than concentrating on long haul Middle East and European shipments, is one hedge several exporters are now discussing.