China’s
cheese manufacturers are advancing fast to get their share in the high-speed
spreading cheese market in China. However, the main sales channels are still in
the food service sector, leaving a high potential for manufacturers to
penetrate into China’s retail market.
Source: Pixabay
According
to CCM’s research, the cheese industry in China witnessed increasing demand for
cheese during 2015-2016. The main sales channels hereby are food services like
hotels, caterings, and the baking business. To be more precise, the entrance
rate of cheese in China even reached 79%.
Even
the retail sector only accounts for 24% of sales in the whole cheese market in
China, the future looks very encouraging. According to the Cheese China 2016
Report by Mintel, retail sales are expected to rise at a CAGR of almost 13%
until the year 2021. Hence, the amount of distributed cheese would end up at
38,830 tonnes. Moreover, looking at countries around China, like Japan and
Vietnam, the potential for cheese sales in retail stores is shifting more
obvious. Those two Asian countries already have a retail portion of cheese at
about 41% and 73% respectively.
After
a strong infiltration of cheese into China’s 1st and 2nd tier cities
in previous years, the most attractive and fast growing opportunities for
manufacturers and traders can be found nowadays in the 3rd and 4th tier
cities in China. Especially bakeries and western style restaurants are
witnessing a surging demand for cheese from their customers.
China’s
dairy manufacturers have discovered the expanding interest and started to
getting into the cheese business as well. However, according to CCM, about 90%
of cheese in China is still imported, which is an amount of about 90,000 tonnes
yearly.
Imports and Exports
The
main exporting country for China’s cheese demand remains New Zealand with a
quantity of cheese export to China by more than 51 million kg and a value of
over USD216 million. The second rank is Australia with almost 20 million kg and
on the third rank can be found the USA with almost 9 million kg.
Top
10 exporting countries of cheese and curd in China, 2016
Source:
China Customs
The
top exporting countries of cheese and curd in China 2016 from China Customs
show, that China’ s cheese import is highly concentrated in the Oceania region,
while European countries, which are traditionally famous for cheese products,
are lacking behind.
Nevertheless,
China is also exporting cheese to several countries, even if the main
destination is Hong Kong. Surprisingly, Italy is the second ranked destination
of cheese from China, according to the data from China Customs.
Top
5 importing countries of cheese and curd from China in 2016 
Source:
China Customs
China’s manufacturers
increase efforts
For
Chinese manufacturers, the jump into the cheese business could be an effective
way out of the sluggish market trend of many dairy products in China. While the
purchase price of milk is constantly going down in the last years, the cheese
business is a promising upmarket diversification.
Currently,
only a few Chinese manufacturers have got a share in the cheese business by
delivering to brands like McDonald's, Milkana, and Savencia. The supplying
Chinese companies, according to CCM, are Bright Dairy & Food and Beijing
Sanyuan Food.
Other
companies in China are putting a lot of effort into the development of cheese
products to get their share in this rising market. One example is Yili, which
is developing a cheese product for the Chinese taste currently, with an unknown
launch date yet. China Mengniu Dairy is working on launching its own cheese
products as well, which demonstrates a diversification from its current product
portfolio, consisting only of cheese sticks for infants in this market. Also,
Ground Food wants to open a cheese processing factory in spring of 2018, which
will be capable of producing about 40,000 tonnes of cheese products yearly.
About CCM
CCM is
the leading market intelligence provider for China’s agriculture, chemicals,
food & ingredients and life science markets.
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