Vietnam’s CT Group hopes to become the world’s biggest exporter of dragon fruit, and has plans to grow up to 10,000 hectares of the fruit in the Northern Territory.
According to the ABC, if the plan gets the go-ahead, the farm will be the biggest of its kind in Australia.
The CT Group has met with members of the Northern Territory government detailing its plans, and the NT Primary Industry minister, Willem Westra van Holthe, said the company currently has a lot of small farms growing dragon fruit in Vietnam, which makes logistics difficult.
"So what they're looking for is a big-scale farm, and the Northern Territory is a place they're seriously looking at, and they're looking at something like 10,000 hectares of dragon fruit in the NT,” he said, before adding that he thinks CT Group’s plans in Australia are a “terrific idea”.
"It would provide jobs for Territorians, I have no doubt about that. They'll need to buy irrigation equipment, set the farm up, they're talking about a processing facility as well, so there will need to be some building and there'll definitely be some significant benefits flowing just from that,” he said.