China Agri News Week 29, 2020
This is the news overview of week 29 from the agricultural team of the Netherlands Embassy in Beijing.
Cheese as the New Growth Point in Chinese Dairy Industry
In recent years, cheese gained increased attention as a new growth point to drive development in the Chinese dairy industry. The development is mainly pushed by the rapid popularization of Western-style consumption. But due to the COVID19 outbreak, structural reform is now also on the government's agenda.
Following the COVID19 outbreak, many dairy enterprises faced difficulties in reaching their consumers, creating a milk surplus, or even waste. As a solution, experts at this year’s annual parliament meeting called for accelerating structural reform by encouraging companies to produce concentrated milk and other measures to process dairy products.
Data shows that China's Market Annual actual consumption of cheese has exceeded 300,000 tons (including cream cheese) in 2019. It is expected that in the upcoming years, China’s cheese consumption will continue to grow with an average annual growth rate of above 19% (source, Chinese only: Nainiu Zhoukan).
Chinese Apple Traders Feel Pressure to Empty their Warehouses as New Apples Enter the Market
The Chinese fruit industry has suffered from the outbreak of Covid-19 since the beginning of 2020. The apple industry in particular has felt the consequences of the pandemic because apples can remain in storage for a long time and the supply season lasts a long time.
But it’s not only the apple sector that is having a rough time. The entire market for seasonal fruits suffers from the outbreak of Covid-19. Quarantine measures significantly hinder distribution, which slows down trade. Furthermore, weather conditions have not been great this year. These weather conditions delay the ripening process of fruits and negatively impact their flavor, which in turn caused a drop in price (source: Asia Fruit China).
The Import of Wine Products Continues to Decline during the First Half of 2020
According to the data unveiled by the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs, Native Produce, and Animal By-Products, the import volume and value of wine products during January to May of 2020 reached 478.1 million Liter and 1344.6 million US dollars, representing 29.1% and 31.4% decline respectively compared with the same period last year.
Starting from 2018, the import volume of grape wine keeps falling for the consecutive 2 years. One of the leading factors to import decline is oversupply. Profitable business up until 2018 attracted many entrepreneurs to China, but lack of knowledge of the market and consumer demands made profit plummet. Of course, the outbreak of COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020 greatly affected the consumption of wine products as the social gathering were restricted.
Read the more detailed analysis in A Comparison of Beer, Wine, and Spirits Import Data in China: 2017 to 2019 (source: Chemlinked).
Short News:
- According to SAMR data, eight food for special medical purposes products (FSMP) obtained China’s registration approval during the first half of 2020. Seven of them are domestic products and the other is imported from the Netherlands. The nutritionally complete formula accounts for the majority of the overall approval in 2020 H1, representing 75% (source: Chemlinked).
- COVID19 was detected in the outer packaging of frozen South American shrimp imported from Ecuador. GACC decided to suspend the registration and exports of three Ecuadorian enterprises in China as of July 11 (source: Farmers Daily, July 11th).
- The first national modern agricultural industrial park in Beijing will be built in Pinggu District. The construction is scheduled to be finished by 2022 and will have hens, dairy cows, chicken, and pig breeding (source: Farmers’ Daily, July 11th).