(seafood.vasep.com.vn) The year 2025 marked a pivotal milestone for Vietnam’s seafood industry in its restructuring process toward sustainability, transparency, and higher value creation, amid continued uncertainties in the global economic and trade environment. Prolonged inflation in major economies, the rising trend of trade protectionism, and increasingly stringent requirements related to environmental standards, traceability, and social responsibility have posed significant challenges to seafood production and exports. Nevertheless, overcoming these pressures, Vietnam’s seafood sector has gradually demonstrated its adaptability, maintained growth momentum, and laid an important foundation for the next stage of development.
In 2025, Vietnam’s seafood export turnover reached approximately USD 11.3 billion, an increase of more than 12% compared to 2024. This result reflects a relatively solid recovery in international market demand and highlights the initial effectiveness of strategic adjustments in production and export activities toward a more balanced approach between volume and value. The export structure continued to shift in a positive direction, with aquaculture products, deeply processed products, and value-added products playing an increasingly prominent role, thereby gradually reducing dependence on low-value and high-compliance-risk product groups.
Within the overall industry landscape, key products such as shrimp and pangasius continued to serve as the foundation, while bivalves, squid–octopus, crabs, and processed products recorded encouraging growth, indicating development potential across more diversified segments aligned with global consumption trends. Notably, the share of processed and value-added products continued to improve, reflecting a transition from raw material exports to finished products that better meet the requirements of developed markets.
In terms of markets, 2025 further reaffirmed the increasingly important role of Asia in Vietnam’s seafood export structure, with China and Hong Kong standing out as large, flexible markets capable of absorbing a wide range of products. At the same time, next-generation free trade agreements such as the CPTPP, EVFTA, and UKVFTA continued to demonstrate their effectiveness, enabling enterprises to expand markets, leverage tariff preferences, and gradually enhance their position in the global supply chain. Meanwhile, traditional markets such as the United States and the EU remained important but imposed increasingly stringent requirements related to legal compliance, environmental standards, and social responsibility, compelling enterprises to invest more heavily in risk management and supply chain transparency.
Alongside these achievements, 2025 also clearly highlighted the long-term challenges facing the seafood industry. Trade defense measures, regulations against IUU fishing, marine mammal protection requirements, together with the impacts of climate change and rising production costs, continue to directly affect the competitiveness of enterprises. These challenges are not merely short-term issues but require systematic and long-term adaptive strategies across the entire industry.
The Report on Vietnam seafood exports in 2025, implemented by the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), provides the business community, regulatory authorities, and domestic and international partners with a comprehensive, systematic, and up-to-date overview of seafood export performance over the past year, while also offering strategic assessments for the period ahead. We expect the report to serve as a valuable reference, supporting policy formulation, business strategy development, and the promotion of sustainable growth for Vietnam’s seafood industry in an increasingly deep integration context.
VASEP respectfully invites enterprises, regulatory agencies, research institutions, and international partners to register for the Report to access in-depth, reliable information and data, contributing to policy planning, trade promotion, and the enhancement of the competitiveness of Vietnam’s seafood sector in the new phase of integration.
Please subscribe the Report on Vietnam seafood exports HERE
or contact: Ms. Hai Yen; Email: nguyenyen@vasep.com.vn; Mobile: +84 8 5858 2626