Frozen durian HS code 0811.90, and the documents it selects

The frozen durian HS code is 0811.90, not 0810.60. Heading 0810.60 names fresh durian; freezing moves the fruit to heading 0811, where durian has no subheading of its own. The change is not cosmetic. It selects a different duty rate, a different origin rule, and — for China since 19 August 2024 — an entirely different set of documents.

What is the HS code for frozen durian?

Frozen durian is declared under heading 0811, which covers fruit and nuts, uncooked or cooked by steaming or boiling in water, frozen. Durian has no line of its own inside that heading, so it falls to subheading 0811.90, the residual line for frozen fruit not specified elsewhere. Fresh durian, by contrast, has a named subheading: 0810.60.

Vietnam declares fresh export durian as 0810.60.00 and frozen durian under heading 0811, with export duty and VAT at zero on both lines. That is Vietnamese export practice as recorded for this trade rather than a rule to cite back at a customs authority, and it has a consequence worth holding onto: the Vietnamese side is indifferent to which of the two headings goes on the declaration, because the export duty is zero either way.

Six digits is where your certainty stops. National schedules split 0811.90 further, sometimes by sugar content, and the number that governs a consignment is the national line, not the international one. Taiwan lists fresh durian at a ten-digit line, 0810.60.00.00.7, and has applied extended per-consignment inspection to Vietnamese fresh durian on that line, reported by Vietnam News on 17 February 2025. Four of those digits do not exist in the code your supplier emails you.

Why does durian lose its own code the moment it is frozen?

Because freezing is a Chapter 8 process, and Chapter 8 has no room for the name. The chapter that would take the fruit out of the fresh-and-frozen world is Chapter 20, and its own opening note says what it does not cover. The Canada Border Services Agency edition of the Customs Tariff Schedule dated 1 January 2024 renders Note 1 to Chapter 20 as follows:

This Chapter does not cover: (a) Vegetables, fruit or nuts, prepared or preserved by the processes specified in Chapter 7, 8 or 11; […]

The plain reading: a fruit prepared by a process that Chapter 8 already describes — chilling, freezing, drying in the chapter’s sense — stays in Chapter 8 no matter how much handling it received on the way. De-seeded, de-shelled, hand-sorted, individually quick frozen durian pulp is still Chapter 8 goods. This is the same test that decides where dried jackfruit stops and a fried snack begins, worked through in detail in the HS boundary between dried jackfruit and jackfruit chips: the process decides the heading, not the packaging and not the price.

So the code most buyers arrive with — durian HS code 0810 — is the fresh line, and it is the one a spec sheet is most likely to carry, because it is the code the fruit wore before the plant touched it. Declaring frozen goods on it produces the wrong duty, can be treated as a false declaration, and pulls in phytosanitary requirements written for a different product.

What does the residual heading do to the prices you are benchmarking against?

It mixes them. A residual subheading counts goods it cannot name, and 0811.90 has just had a five-dollar fruit poured into it.

Vietnam’s entire HS 0811.90 export line — all frozen fruit not named elsewhere — was USD 221.6 million across 88.1 million kilogrammes in 2023, and USD 224 million in 2022, on WITS and UN Comtrade data, with 2024 not yet reported by Vietnam at the time of reading. Frozen durian on its own reached 94,000 tonnes and USD 470 million in 2025, on figures published by Thanh Niên on 2 September 2026. One fruit, which could not lawfully be shipped to China at all before 19 August 2024, is now worth roughly twice what the whole residual heading was worth two years earlier. An average unit value drawn from 0811.90 is therefore an average of a one-dollar product and a five-dollar product. Frozen durian’s own 2025 unit value ran near USD 5.0/kg for Vietnam against USD 6.7/kg for Thailand, on the same published figures. A buyer benchmarking a durian offer against a 0811.90 average is benchmarking against bananas.

Q1/2026 gives the same warning from the other direction: about 11,600 tonnes of frozen durian at roughly USD 4,302 per tonne, up 20% year on year, against 68,500 tonnes fresh in the same quarter. It is one off-season quarter and not an annual benchmark. The defence is simple. Use unit values only when they come from shipment records that carry a goods description; a figure that comes from a code alone cannot tell you what was in the box.

Which documents travel with a frozen durian consignment to China?

Two sets exist, and the tariff heading is the switch between them. Fresh durian runs on the protocol of 11 July 2022 and on planting-area and packing-facility codes. Frozen durian runs on the protocol effective 19 August 2024, which permits exactly three forms — whole fruit in shell, segments in the aril without seed, and de-shelled pulp — and adds a registration held in China. The frozen durian customs documents below are the base set plus what the frozen line adds; the sequence in which they are raised is set out in the export process, and the food-safety schemes behind them are held through the certified partner facility and listed under certifications.

The protocol’s freezing requirement is a number with its method attached, which is what makes it usable in a specification: at or below −35 °C for at least one hour, until the product core reaches −18 °C or below, then maintained at −18 °C or below through storage and transport, following the Codex code of practice CAC/RCP 8-1976. It also requires raw material from registered growing areas, hand sorting, HACCP and traceability, control of microbiology, residues, heavy metals and mycotoxins, and packaging that is clean, new and unused.

Who holds the GACC registration number, and can the exporter hold it?

The producing establishment holds it. Not the trading company, not the importer. Registration under GACC Decree No. 280 is granted to the physical plant and filed through CIFER at cifer.singlewindow.cn, which means your due diligence has to be aimed at the factory that will actually run the order, not at the counterparty on the invoice.

Decree 280 was issued on 14 October 2025 and took effect on 1 June 2026, repealing Decree 248 at its Article 33. The article-level detail below follows the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN reporting on the decree; the original Chinese text has not been read here. Article 20 provides that a substantive change — relocation, a new domestic registration number, a change of product scope or process, a change of food-safety management system, or a change of legal representative — requires registration from the beginning rather than an amendment, and the establishment cannot export while it waits. A change of legal representative is an internal event that nobody tells a factory’s customers about. Articles 21 and 22 give five-year validity with automatic renewal for most product groups, while excluded groups must file inside a 3–12 month window and CIFER locks the renewal function outside it; Báo Chính phủ reported in March 2026 that 118 Vietnamese enterprises had already been locked out for missing the window, against roughly 4,000 holding codes. Article 27 makes lending or transferring a registration number a ground for revocation, so an offer to ship under someone else’s code destroys the code rather than borrowing it. Under GACC Announcement No. 27 of 2026, the importer declares the producer’s Chinese registration number in the licence field under document type code 519, and for self-registered establishments the number must be valid at the moment of customs declaration — not at the moment of production. That distinction belongs in a contract, because goods can be made lawfully and cleared unlawfully.

VinFruits Global puts the same questions to a candidate facility before a specification is agreed: what the registration number is, when it expires, whether it has been brought under Decree 280, whether its registered product scope covers this product form, and whether anything listed in Article 20 has changed in the last twelve months. “Do you have a 248 code?” is now a stale question, and a supplier who answers it without mentioning Decree 280 has told you something about their compliance system. Where IQF and purée sit in GACC’s product taxonomy — and so whether a recommendation letter is required — is not established here; the group list is dynamic under Article 6 and has to be checked on the date of contract.

Does frozen durian escape the cadmium and auramine O regime?

No. China has inspected 100% of durian consignments since January 2025, after auramine O was found on Thai fruit, and freezing does not exempt a lot. Cadmium is capped at 0.05 mg/kg under GB 2762 and auramine O carries zero tolerance, where detection means the lot is lost.

Every lot needs a test certificate from a GACC-recognised laboratory before export, on a registration filed at least seven days ahead, with sampling of two fruit taken at random from five or six cartons per container. Turnaround runs one to two days off peak and four to eight days at peak. For frozen goods that is a scheduling cost; for fresh fruit against a three-to-seven-day shelf life it is the whole risk, which is one of the quieter arguments for the frozen line.

The laboratory count is where two records disagree, and the disagreement is the operating rule. One record gives 37 GACC-approved laboratories; another, dated 7 August 2026, gives 50 across 13 provinces and cities with 18 added on 3 August 2026, and flags a further discrepancy between sources at 48 versus 47 for cadmium. Both readings are held. The count moves as new laboratories are recognised, so a supplier quoting a number from memory is quoting a stale list. Ask which laboratory issued the certificate and on what date, then check that laboratory against the list current on the certificate’s date. Note also that Thailand holds more than 300 China-recognised orchard-level testing points, which is why its inspection frequency sits at 30% rather than 100%. That is a sector-level asset Vietnam does not have, and every plan should assume 100%.

Does freezing in Vietnam make the fruit Vietnamese for an FTA claim?

No. Fresh fruit is Chapter 8 and frozen fruit under 0811 is still Chapter 8, so there is no change of chapter and no change of tariff heading. Freezing, chilling, washing, sorting, packing and mere cutting are listed as insufficient working that does not confer origin.

RCEP specifies change of chapter for heading 08.11, on Annex 3A in the HS2012 edition published by the Australian Border Force. The EVFTA rule for Chapter 8 is stricter still: all Chapter 8 materials must be wholly obtained, with a separate cap of 20% by weight on sugar materials of headings 17.01 and 17.02. One caveat travels with that reading — the copy of the product-specific rules consulted did not name the agreement on its face, and Annex I of Thông tư 11/2020/TT-BCT is the text to check. Your own customs authority settles it.

The mechanism matters more than any single case: fruit imported from a third country, frozen in Vietnam and shipped under 0811 does not acquire Vietnamese origin for EU or CPTPP preference, while the same fruit turned into a Chapter 20 good can. The documented worked case is Cambodian mango, not durian. Where a plant runs imported and domestic raw material through the same line, the test is separation — separate warehouse, separate ledger, separate production run, separate file. An inability to separate them at post-clearance audit has the same effect as a false declaration. Vietnam’s Decree 128/2020/NĐ-CP of 19 October 2020 penalises mis-declared origin affecting duty at Article 9, evasion at Article 14, and export or import of goods falsely claiming Vietnamese origin at Article 17, while Decree 98/2020/NĐ-CP of 26 August 2020, Article 44, covers a forged certificate of origin. The administrative fine is not the consequence that hurts. Seizure, suspension of import-export activity and loss of REX self-certification are.

Can you read a duty rate off the six-digit code?

You cannot. Rates live at national eight-, nine- or ten-digit lines, and the six digits only tell you which page of the schedule to open. US HTS 0811.90.80 carries an MFN rate of 14.50%, with duty-free treatment for a named list of partners that does not include Vietnam, read on 5 September 2026. On a unit value near USD 5.0/kg that is roughly USD 0.73/kg before anything else. Whether any 2026 additional duty on Vietnamese goods reaches frozen agricultural products is an open question here; a CBP binding ruling or a licensed broker settles it, and no rate should be assumed.

Japan is the sharper case, because there the preference is worse than no preference. On 0811.90 the WTO/MFN rate recorded is Free, while the EPA rate recorded for Vietnam is 3.6%, both on the schedule of 1 January 2016. A Form VJ costs time and fees to obtain and would buy nothing on that line. Both readings are stated because the schedule has moved since: the current edition on the Japan Customs schedule of 8 August 2026 and the Japan Tariff Association Web Tariff at kanzei.or.jp is what governs, and Japan publishes at nine digits — for another fruit entirely, papaya preparations of Chapter 20 sit at 2008.99-219 and 2008.99-259 with six different rates each, which is what a real Japanese line looks like. The generalisable rule: compare MFN against every applicable preference before paying for a certificate.

China’s MFN rates for 0810.60 and 0811 could not be confirmed here, and the industry assumption that ACFTA Form E delivers zero is an assumption, not a finding. Ask the importer what Form E actually saves them; if MFN is already zero, the certificate is paperwork with no value.

In Korea and the United States the code is not a tax question at all. It decides whether the product may enter, which is why Korean frozen durian imports rose 128.6% in the first half of 2026 from a base of USD 1.5 million and US imports rose 107% in Q1/2026. China still took about 91% of Vietnamese durian export value in the first half of 2026, at USD 987 million, so the frozen protocol is where most of the volume lives. The EU residue picture is why the check frequency moved: active substances found above limits on Vietnamese durian include carbendazim, fipronil, azoxystrobin, dimethomorph, metalaxyl, lambda-cyhalothrin and acetamiprid, at 0.021–6.3 mg/kg against MRLs of 0.005–0.1 mg/kg.

What goes in the specification when there is no international grade?

Everything, because nothing is supplied by default. There is no Codex commodity standard and no USDA grade for frozen durian, so every threshold is bilateral and every number you do not write is a number the seller gets to choose. Three rules make a threshold enforceable: state whether a percentage is by weight or by count, state the sample size, and state the sample condition.

Over-glazing — net weight declared before the glaze comes off — is the defect that moves the most money and is caught least often, so the deglazed line above is the one to paste into the purchase order. Because the line has no kill step, no blanching and no pasteurisation, the product is handled as ready-to-eat and Listeria monocytogenes becomes a required parameter rather than an optional one; whether the EU and the US formally class frozen durian as ready-to-eat is unsettled, and compliance counsel or the destination authority settles it. Wooden pallets need ISPM 15. The data logger exists to give you evidence in a dispute rather than to keep the goods cold, so its serial number belongs in the shipping file. And a net weight discrepancy of more than 1 kg against the declaration is one of the commonest grounds for rejection at Chinese customs, which is a reminder that the code is only half the declaration.

The closing recommendation is the same across every market: obtain an advance ruling before the first shipment of each new product form, not after the first audit. Japan’s 事前教示 is free and binding, the EU and UK issue binding tariff information, US CBP issues binding rulings, and Vietnam operates advance determination of commodity codes with its own customs authority.

Common questions

What is the HS code for frozen durian?

Frozen durian is declared under heading 0811, which covers fruit and nuts, uncooked or cooked by steaming or boiling in water, frozen. Durian has no subheading of its own inside that heading, so it falls to 0811.90, the residual line for frozen fruit not specified elsewhere. This applies to whole frozen fruit, segments and de-shelled pulp alike. The national eight- or ten-digit line in the destination country is what carries the duty rate.

Why is 0810.60 wrong for frozen durian when durian has its own code?

0810.60 is the subheading for fresh durian only. Once the fruit is frozen it moves to heading 0811, and durian has no named line there. Using the fresh code on a frozen consignment produces the wrong duty, can be treated as a false declaration, and pulls in phytosanitary requirements written for fresh goods. Vietnam charges zero export duty on both lines, so nobody at the loading end has a financial reason to catch the error.

Which documents travel with a frozen durian shipment to China?

The base set is contract, invoice and packing list; customs declaration; bill of lading; a phytosanitary certificate filed through the national single window; a cadmium and auramine O test certificate from a GACC-recognised laboratory for every lot; C/O Form E; and insurance where the Incoterm requires it. The frozen line adds four: the establishment’s GACC registration under Decree 280, the HACCP file, the freezing and transport temperature charts, and the bilingual label carrying the registration number.

Can the exporter hold the GACC registration, or does it belong to the factory?

It belongs to the physical producing establishment. Registration under GACC Decree No. 280, in force since 1 June 2026, is filed through CIFER by the plant itself and cannot be held by a trading company or an importer. Article 27 makes lending or transferring a registration number a ground for revocation. Direct your due diligence at the factory that will run the order, and ask for the number, its expiry and its registered product scope.

Does freezing durian in Vietnam make it Vietnamese origin for an FTA claim?

No. Fresh and frozen fruit are both in Chapter 8, so freezing produces no change of chapter and no change of heading, and freezing appears on the list of operations that are insufficient to confer origin. RCEP requires change of chapter for heading 08.11, and the EVFTA rule for Chapter 8 is stricter, requiring materials to be wholly obtained. Third-country fruit frozen in Vietnam does not become Vietnamese for preference purposes.