Food and Beverage Demand in China

With the growth of production and development of economy, the level of income of Chinese urban residents has increased and food consumption structure has been changed. As Beijing Olympics successfully closing, food and drink market shows no sign of tapering off. The vast market is still driving demand for non-essential, healthy, high-end food products.

Market overview

In 2003 the Chinese food market was 35 per cent of the size of the US market; by 2020 this will figure will rise to a considerable 82 per cent. China will become the world's second largest food retail market by 2020 behind the US. While growth in dollar terms is set to far exceed this at 128.1% to US$295.3bn in 2012. With rapid growth of demand of healthy, luxury food & beverage, Canadian exporter has gain the great advantage as early mover. Today, small group of Canadian companies that introduce beef, seafood, wine, and other food and beverage products have achieve their preliminary goal of market entry success.

Opportunity for Canadian Businesses

For the most of Canadian food & beverage business, especially, small-medium sized business, have still not realized that the potential economic impacts were caused by the Chinese market capacities and scale. Lacking of exporting awareness, marketing information and the financial resources are directly contributing the result of opportunities missing. For winery business alone, China is today the world�s ninth-largest wine market by volume and the sixth largest win producer. From a base of almost nothing a few years ago, the country boasts more than 400 commercially viable domestic wineries. Meanwhile, the value of wine imports to china is expected to reach USD$ 870 million by 2017 up almost fivefold from today. But today only few wineries and few Canadian brands starting to export to China. By compare to Australia, Germany, US wineries, our exporting volume and dollar amount are still lagging too far behind. The other Canadian food producer also experienced the same difficulty to recognize their opportunities.

See our �Ontario Wine Trip� and BC Canadian pavilion trade show at Beijing June 2007