On the topic of New Zealand’s fruits, the first to jump into your mind would be kiwifruit. As a matter of fact, Mother Nature endows New Zealand with clean air, water, and abundant sunshine so as to produce the best agricultural products such as apples, strawberries, cherries, oranges, grapes, and blueberries.
Take apples for example. Andy Borland, Managing Director of Scales Corporation Ltd. and Chairman of the Board of Primary Collaboration New Zealand Ltd. (PCNZ), commented after the recent visit to ExFresh, Yiguo’s cold-chain supply chain located in Baoshan District, “Our apples are said to have the best flavors in the world according to our consumers’ feedback. Apart from the good environment for planting, the passion and professionalism of our fruit farmers are also the determining factors in our product safety and quality. We would develop more new varieties of apples to cater to the market with better taste and color.”
Those apples would be such a hit among Chinese consumers, he hopes, while citing the successful example of Mr Apple’s sales to Yiguo, which stood at five containers last year and is set to triple this year. Moreover, through the Yiguo e-commerce platform, he realizes that New Zealand products are quite popular among Chinese.
That is due to the high credibility of New Zealand products harvested from a land of no pollution. Eric Li, Vice President of the Global Purchasing Department of Shanghai Yiguo E-commerce Co. Ltd., said that fruits from New Zealand are quite high-end and unique. “Our consumers are willing to pay more for higher quality products. Our e-commerce channel is to help them achieve that.” According to statistics from Yiguo, using last year as an example, total sales of New Zealand kiwi fruits and apples took the leading percentage of all sales of New Zealand fruits.
Statistics show that New Zealand is among the top ten countries for fruit exports to China, with a 78.5% increase rate of exports to the Chinese market. Realizing that Chinese consumers still yearn for more varieties of exotic New Zealand food, New Zealand food giants collaborated to form PCNZ, in a bid to enlarge their market share in China. One member, Pacific Pace, is composed of three big fruit companies, namely Freshmax, Mr Apple, and Bostock.
Tim Goodacre, Chairman of Mr Apple, told Produce Report that China is a valuable market. Mr Apple is the biggest apple exporter in New Zealand, although they still consider it quite necessary to join hands with other enterprises such as Freshmax and Bostock to combine forces in a bid to tap the potential market hand-in-hand.
Kevin Parish, General Manager of PCNZ, said, “Since the very beginning, we have been keeping close contact with Yiguo in order to find some cooperative opportunities and join hands to develop business. And obviously, Yiguo has also been making great efforts in promoting New Zealand products, especially fruits. For example, the Honey Belle pears that we just saw in their cold-chain storage. And one of our companies will also soon introduce organic squash to the China market.”
Andy Borland could not agree more with the strategic plan in China e-commerce: “E-commerce development in China is revolutionary. As we also tried the online shopping experience, the fast delivery really amazed us. We are quite confident in e-commerce future development in China.”
E-commerce has been booming in China in recent years, with Tmall’s 2015 Single’s Day promotion sales hitting a record high of 91.2 billion RMB. This figure shows that Chinese people’s consuming concepts and habits have changed greatly in recent years. Shopping online is the new trend and many people tend to get information about products via channels such as the internet and social media.
Chinese consumers also have more and more demanding requirements on the variety and quality of overseas fruits. To cater to these demands, Yiguo has in recent years also strived to increase direct sourcing from abroad. Apart from New Zealand apples and cherries, Yiguo has also directly purchased greengage plums from New Zealand, which were a hit with consumers.
According to Eric Li, there are so many agricultural treasures in New Zealand, but unfortunately many fruits at the moment do not yet have access to the Chinese market. However, since there is a huge potential consumer market, the potential is there. “It is up to us to tap the market potential together and share business opportunities.”
Image Source: MZMC
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