Lychee
Our customers use lychee because of its unique sweet, floral flavor and strong appeal in premium and exotic products. Lychee has a juicy, aromatic taste that enhances beverages, desserts, candies, and fruit blends, helping create distinctive and refreshing flavor profiles. Its subtle sweetness allows it to complement other fruits without overpowering them. Lychee is also a source of vitamin C and antioxidants, supporting wellness-oriented marketing claims. It is commonly processed into juices, purees, syrups, and canned forms, which extend shelf life and make it convenient for large-scale manufacturing. Additionally, its association with tropical and upscale products helps brands position offerings as unique and high-quality.
Lychee can be supplied as organic upon request
Botanical: Litchi Chinensis
The Luxury Fruit
Lychee is a small tropical fruit that grows on evergreen trees native to southern China and Southeast Asia – commonly processed into lychee puree and lychee IQF. It has a rough, reddish-pink outer skin that is easily peeled to reveal a translucent white flesh inside, surrounding a single dark seed. The fruit has a soft, juicy texture and a fragrant aroma. Lychee trees thrive in warm, humid climates and can produce fruit in clusters. It has been cultivated for over a thousand years and is an important fruit in many Asian cultures.
The lychee (Litchi chinensis) is a subtropical evergreen fruit tree native to the warm coastal provinces of Southern China and Southeast Asia. Belonging to the Sapindaceae (soapberry) family, it is a close botanical relative to rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum) and longan (Dimocarpus longan). Highly sought after across the global beverage, dairy, bakery, and Asian culinary sectors, lychee features a thin, brittle red pericarp (rind) enclosing a plump, translucent-white gelatinous aril (flesh) that surrounds a smooth brown seed.
In commercial fruit ingredient processing, variety selection dictates fruit sugar density, seed-to-flesh ratio, and aromatic intensity:
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Mauritius (Commercial Benchmark): The undisputed primary processing variety grown globally. Featuring medium-to-large fruit with soft red skin and juicy flesh, Mauritius offers an excellent balance of high natural sugars, balanced sub-acidity, and robust floral top notes. It is the premier choice for high-volume single-strength purees, aseptic fruit bases, and IQF pitting lines.
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Fei Zi Xiao (Concubine Smile): A famous premium Asian variety characterized by large fruit, a distinctive pale red-and-green blush skin, extremely small (“shriveled”) seeds, and exceptionally high sugar content. It yields thick, fleshy aril segments preferred for super-premium IQF cuts and high-end dessert preps.
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Brewster & Gui Wei (Cinnamon Flavor): Specialty cultivars offering intensely aromatic, sweet flesh with subtle cinnamon-rose aromatics, widely utilized for artisanal craft brewing bases, high-end ice cream ribbons, and specialty cocktail mixers.
Brothers International partners with origin processors equipped with high-speed automated pitting and de-shelling lines that strip the tough red rind and cleanly isolate the succulent white aril without crushing the inner seed, eliminating bitter tannin astringency.
Global Sourcing Through the Brothers International Network:
Lychee trees require distinct climatic conditions: a brief, cool, frost-free winter period to induce blooming, followed by warm, humid summers with abundant rainfall during fruit set. Because fresh lychee fruit exhibits a rapid post-harvest decline (with the outer red pericarp turning brown within 24 to 48 hours of picking) establishing immediate processing integration at origin is vital. Brothers International connects North American procurement teams to premier global growing belts through our established network of audited processing partners.
We source high-grade lychee ingredients from leading tropical agricultural hubs:
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East & Southeast Asia (China, Vietnam & Thailand): China’s Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, alongside Vietnam’s Bac Giang province and Northern Thailand, represent the global epicenter of commercial lychee cultivation. Origin processors operate state-of-the-art pulping, HTST pasteurization, and cryogenic blast-freezing facilities directly adjacent to orchards.
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Indian Ocean & Africa (Madagascar & South Africa): Madagascar is a world-renowned exporter of high-grade Mauritius lychees, providing vital counter-seasonal processing capacity during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter months.
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North & Central America (Mexico & United States): Mexico (Sinaloa and Veracruz) and domestic groves in Florida and Hawaii supply fresh-crop processing lines with short ocean transit times to North American ports.
By coordinating supply across Asia, Madagascar, Mexico, and domestic hubs, Brothers International insulates your manufacturing facility against localized weather disruptions, short harvest windows, and ocean shipping bottlenecks.
Harvest Cycles & Continuous Supply Management:
In the Northern Hemisphere (China, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico), the lychee harvest is compressed into a tight late-spring to early-summer window, running from May through July. In the Southern Hemisphere (Madagascar and South Africa), harvesting occurs counter-seasonally from November through January. Because raw lychees deteriorate rapidly after harvest, origin facilities operate continuously during harvest peaks to peel, pit, mill into puree, or cryogenically freeze whole arils into lychee IQF formats.
Managing these tight seasonal processing windows and coordinating international cold-chain logistics is a core competency of Brothers International. Our operations and logistics teams oversee multi-quarter inventory allocations, deep-frozen ocean freight (-18°C), USDA/FDA import clearances, C-TPAT supply chain security, and strategic cold-storage warehousing across North America. Whether your line requires frozen 5-gallon pails of lychee puree or bulk master cartons of IQF pitted lychee arils, our network guarantees ready inventory year-round.
Rigorous Quality Control, Traceability & Compliance:
Processing lychee ingredients requires advanced mechanical finishing to completely separate the inner fruit aril from the outer red rind and inner seed coat (testa), which contain astringent tannins. Furthermore, processors manage enzymatic browning (polyphenol oxidase deactivation) and thermal pasteurization to lock in the fruit’s natural translucent white color and delicate floral esters. Every supplier within the Brothers International network undergoes a comprehensive auditing process to guarantee complete supply chain traceability, sustainable agricultural practices, fair labor standards, and strict compliance with USDA, FDA, and international food safety standards.
Through our network, we deliver lychee ingredients backed by complete technical documentation and top-tier industry certifications, including GFSI benchmarks (BRC, SQF, FSSC 22000), USDA Organic (NOP), Kosher, Non-GMO, and Halal standards. Our quality assurance protocols include testing for seed/rind fragment limits, pesticide residues, heavy metals, microbiological safety, particle fineness, titratable acidity, and Brix adherence.
The Brothers International
Quality Promise
Brothers International and its 4 divisions, Brothers Ingredients, Dennick Fruit Source, Hosh International and Food Partners, are trusted global importers of premium ingredients to major food and beverage manufacturers in North America. We deliver consistent quality and supply across every format the industry demands. Our Lychee is sourced from the earth’s prime growing regions where farming expertise, climate and soil composition come together to produce Lychee of exceptional caliber. All of our suppliers undergo a rigorous vetting process to ensure we work with only the highest-quality processors and can fully guarantee traceability, sustainability, and compliance with all international regulations.
Each of our divisions has a specialized operations team to manage shipments and coordinate with customers and suppliers. They work closely with our in-house customs team to ensure efficient clearance, and collaborate with the USDA and FDA to maintain full regulatory compliance. This ensures your ingredients move seamlessly through every stage of import, arriving on time and ready for production with complete confidence. With decades of sourcing expertise and a strong commitment to customer success, you can count on Brothers International to deliver the premium ingredients your products require.
Industry Glossary
A Reference Guide for Fruit Ingredient Terminology
Check out our glossary for a consolidated reference of commonly used terminology across the global fruit ingredient industry. It provides straightforward definitions and context for the language and concepts referenced throughout the industry.
