Sweet success? Chinese food giant hopes candies are magic ingredient in global plans

The return of China’s White Rabbit creamy vanilla sweets to the global stage could be a sign of things to come.

In 1972, then-premier Zhou Enlai presented the iconic sweets, made from whole milk powder, to visiting US president Richard Nixon.Now officials from Shanghai are giving out the sweets to visitors at a trade show in Milan.

Yet the state-owned food group, Bright Food, which owns the brand – as if to emphasise its international footprint – has tweaked the ingredients of the original White Rabbit sweets by making them with milk powder produced by New Zealand dairy companies.

Bright Food is very much a global player, and has big plans for the future – both on the mainland and abroad.

State-owned Jiefang Daily reported that the US’ Association of Food Industries predicted the size of the imported food market in China would exceed 480 billion yuan (HK$608 billion) in 2018; by then the country would be the world’s largest importer of food products.

Bright Food has been quick to acknowledge the growing appetite among wealthy mainland Chinese people for healthier and safer imported food, including sweets, chocolates, biscuits and fruit. It's driven in large part by a series of food scares in the country.