Tea to China
Sell tea to China? Yes, it might sound mad, but that’s exactly what tea companies in the UK are trying to do.
Accompanied by Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, tea companies Teapigs tea and Imporient recently travelled to China to sell their wares. Forty other food and drink firms on the trip included included chocolate and beer producers.
It’s hoped the recent week-long trip will help secure orders worth millions of pounds.
Boost exports
The trip is part of a concentrated effort to boost British exports to China – the world’s largest consumer market. Its fast-emerging middle class has developed a taste for Western brands. Chinese people’s diets have become far more Western in recent years due to mass urbanisation.
China produces more tea than any other country in the world and is responsible for a third of total global production. The Chinese also drink more tea than any other nation. The irony was however not lost on Mr Paterson.
He said: “Tea to China. I think it’s really good. Nothing is impossible if you try hard enough and you have a good product at the right price. There are these absolutely massive emerging markets and we want to get in there.”
About 1.4m tonnes of tea is produced in China each year. Recent reports show that the Chinese are drinking more of it too. Figures show that tea tea consumption in China has risen by 10% over the last two years to 1.06m tonnes.
Dairy
But while the likes of tea companies and nut firms attended the trip, Mr Paterson said that dairy was the expedition’s priority.
The UK wants to close the gap between its export and import of dairy products by increasing sales to countries like China. Currently, the UK imports £1.2bn more dairy products around the world than it exports.
Dairy firms on the trip included Trioni, a Welsh company that specialises in exporting UHT milk, Somerdale cheese, and chocolate producers Spencer and Fleetwood.
“From chocolate to cheddar, China’s population is getting a taste for dairy, and Britain’s world-class food industry can supply that demand,” he said.
Emerging market
Mr Paterson said that Chinese consumers are driven to eat high-quality food and that the trip could help to fill £1bn export hole in dairy products.
“Bluntly you’ve got to get on an aeroplane and you’ve got to go there and see what the potential is, talk to people, find out the local contacts and get stuck in.
“We are only going to prosper as a country if we get a slice of the international action. We have got this enormous emerging market in China and we have got to be in there,” he said.
Somerdale said that consumers in the Far East prefer sweeter, milder cheeses. To appeal to this market, they have created products flavoured with mango, ginger and cranberry.
China’s urban population
Over half of China’s population now dwells in cities – 691m in 2011. This is an increase of a quarter of the total population in 1990. Urbanisation has meant consumers tastes have changed.
To meet the increased demand for dairy products, China has been boosting its own milk production. In the last three years, the country has imported nearly 300,000 heifers.
Growth in the country’s dairy sector is however limited by a lack of suitable land and strict food safety requirements.
“There is a tremendous opportunity for us to get high quality, reliable, trusted, traceable, healthy, top quality British dairy products in,” said Mr Paterson.
In May, a trade mission to China succeeded in raising orders for for 2,000 high-quality British pigs. Chinese farmers bought the animals to breed with their inferior-quality domestic herds.
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