\u201cSo in that light, they\u2019ve made a very strong push into beefing up their own food supply chains in terms of grains, rice, dairy, which has impacted us, beef and lamb. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a very strong poultry and pork domestic supply.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said these areas had been bolstered aggressively over the past 5 to 10 years.<\/p>\n
Felicity Roxburgh, executive director of the NZ International Business Forum, said any change in policy by such key market partners is watched closely by both government and exporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to look at this kind of shifting focus on improving domestic food production in China as part of the kind of broader environment that we\u2019re working with at the moment internationally. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there is a kind of global shift, including in some of our largest trading partners, towards more of a security and resilience approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said China had been our largest trading partner for many years and is a big importer of dairy, meat, kiwifruit, and other horticulture products.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina is an important market for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said China had the scale to grow some of those products quite well, but there were limitations.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the scale of the population, some of the domestic constraints around land use and water mean that imports will remain important.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat it means for us is that we just have to keep investing in our strong premium products, our specialised products, where we can kind of genuinely differentiate ourselves and just play to that important consumer trend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exports to China hit 10-year highs<\/p>\n
Results from the most recent New Zealand Business Roundtable\u2019s survey about sentiment in China found that about 60% found domestic competition was their biggest challenge. Despite this, though, sentiment was growing, with the outlook improved from last year.<\/p>\n
Boyle said while competition has intensified and made business harder, there\u2019s still appetite for high-quality New Zealand produce and last year\u2019s total exports \u2013 worth $21 billion \u2013 were the highest they\u2019d been in 10 years.<\/p>\n
He said exporters have become more targeted about how and who to sell \u2013 and it was important to be on the ground to understand consumers and changing trends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge, huge market and so we have to pinpoint exactly where we\u2019re going to sell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amidst increased competition in the Chinese beef market \u2013 with New Zealand only the fourth biggest of the international importers accounting for about 6% of total beef import volumes \u2013 Boyle said New Zealand exporters had built much stronger, fresh and chilled supply of beef and lamb into China over the past 18 months.<\/p>\n
By comparison though, New Zealand is the largest exporter of apples into China.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a very large domestic growth of apples and large supplies of Envy, but our premium apples have found really good markets at the top end of the retail and high-end offline retail and also online too. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re targeting that high premium area of sales for our fruit, and it\u2019s been very successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Localising content<\/p>\n
Boyle said there was still a very healthy appetite for high-quality New Zealand produce.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the international importers have been doing is they\u2019ve been localising their content. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat our brands have done is affiliate with Chinese characteristics, Chinese language, Chinese packaging, and therefore they\u2019ve been able to prosper.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cited Rockit\u2019s recent brand partnership with Wang Yibo \u2013 one of China\u2019s most influential celebrities \u2013 as an example.<\/p>\n
– This story was first published on rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo in that light, they\u2019ve made a very strong push into beefing up their own food supply chains…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4413,14736,29744,2893,1958,564,25689,226,5971,117,111,43,139,5006,69,90,25690,2437,4276,80],"class_list":["post-488976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-chinas","tag-domestic","tag-exporters","tag-fear","tag-focus","tag-food","tag-gianina","tag-growing","tag-need","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-schwanecke","tag-security","tag-why","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}