Green jujubes grown in Kaohsiung are scheduled to hit supermarket shelves in France today as part of the city’s efforts to introduce the fruit to consumers in Europe, the Kaohsiung City Government Agriculture Bureau said yesterday.
Kaohsiung green jujubes are already sold in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Palau and Singapore, the bureau said.
The city is the largest green jujube producer in Taiwan, with a growing area of 750 hectares that makes up more than 40 percent of the country’s total for jujubes.
Photo courtesy of Kaohsiung City Government’s Agriculture Bureau
Farms growing the fruit are mainly found in Alian (阿蓮), Dashe (大社), Gangshan (岡山), Tianliao (田寮) and Yanchao (燕巢) districts, the bureau said.
The annual production value of Kaohsiung green jujubes has averaged NT$1 billion (US$35.87 million) in the past few years, the bureau said, adding that it intensified its efforts to boost visibility in the global market after exporting 870,897 tonnes of the fruit last year.
Kaohsiung is selling batches of the Tainung No. 13 green jujube — also known as the “Shirley” (雪麗) — to France through a trader in the Netherlands, the bureau said, describing the Shirley green jujube as having a perfect balance between sweet and sour flavors.
The green jujubes first arrived in the Netherlands by air and were then transported via road to France, it said, adding that the entire delivery process involved advanced cold chain storage so that consumers in France could enjoy fresh green jujubes like those sold in Taiwan.
The bureau worked with the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute under the Council of Agriculture to ensure that the fruit traveled well.
In addition to the Shirley, Kaohsiung has also sold Kaohsiung No. 11 Zhenmi (珍蜜) green jujubes overseas.
The bureau said people in Taiwan can log on to the Best of Kaohsiung e-commerce platform to order green jujubes into next month.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump weighed in on a pressing national issue: The rebranding of a restaurant chain. Last week, Cracker Barrel, a Tennessee company whose nationwide locations lean heavily on a cozy, old-timey aesthetic — “rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table” — announced it was updating its logo. Uncle Herschel, the man who once appeared next to the letters with a barrel, was gone. It sparked ire on the right, with Donald Trump Jr leading a charge against the rebranding: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” Later, Trump Sr weighed
SinoPac Financial Holdings Co (永豐金控) is weighing whether to add a life insurance business to its portfolio, but would tread cautiously after completing three acquisitions in quick succession, president Stanley Chu (朱士廷) said yesterday. “We are carefully considering whether life insurance should play a role in SinoPac’s business map,” Chu told reporters ahead of an earnings conference. “Our priority is to ensure the success of the deals we have already made, even though we are tracking some possible targets.” Local media have reported that Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽), which is seeking buyers amid financial strains, has invited three financial
Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Cambricon Technologies Corp (寒武紀科技) plunged almost 9 percent after warning investors about a doubling in its share price over just a month, a record gain that helped fuel a US$1 trillion Chinese market rally. Cambricon triggered the selloff with a Thursday filing in which it dispelled talk about nonexistent products in the pipeline, reminded investors it labors under US sanctions, and stressed the difficulties of ascending the technology ladder. The Shanghai-listed company’s stock dived by the most since April in early yesterday trading, while the market stood largely unchanged. The litany of warnings underscores growing scrutiny of
OUTLOOK: Among the six sub-indices, only the stock market confidence sub-index rose due to strong equity performance and expectations of a US Federal Reserve rate cut Consumer confidence weakened further this month, sliding to its lowest level in two-and-a-half years as households grew increasingly uneasy about the economic outlook, job security and big-ticket spending, a survey by the National Central University showed yesterday. The consumer confidence index fell 1.07 points from last month to 63.31, the weakest number since May 2023, said the university’s Research Center for Taiwan Economic Development (RCTED), which conducts the monthly poll. “Although the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics recently increased Taiwan’s GDP growth forecast for this year to 4.45 percent, consumer sentiment tells a different story,” RCTED director Dachrahn Wu