Food safety fears spark growing taste for imported fruit among China’s middle class
Mainland imports of avocados have risen annually by more than 400 per cent in the past three years, and lemons and limes are up by more than 300 per cent compared with last year
Zhang Che was eating a Mexican avocado – currently one of the most popular fruits sold in China – just as she was reading the latest news article about the poor sales of domestic fruit growers.
A fourth high-end fruit store has now opened within five minutes walk of her Shanghai home.
“When I was young, buying fruit meant choosing apples, pears and bananas,” Zhang says. “Now my family spends nearly 1,000 yuan [about HK$1,200] each month on a much wider range of fruit, such as cherries from California and kiwi fruit from New Zealand,” Zhang said.
Longstanding fears over food safety standards on the mainland – including frequent reports of residue left on domestic fruit after the excessive use of pesticides and swelling and ripening agents – have led to a craze among China’s growing middle class for imported prime fruits in recent years.
Avocados shipped in from Mexico were now the fastest increasing item, said Mabel Zhuang, China consultant of the global fresh produce trade organisation, Produce Marketing Association.
Imports of avocados have increased annually by more than 400 per cent in the past three years, she said. Just behind avocados in rising popularity were lemons and limes, with year-on-year growth last year of more than 300 per cent, blueberries at 160 per cent and bananas at 140 per cent.
In contrast, mainland news has been filled with frequent reports about Chinese farmers having to throw away peaches and apples that they have been unable to sell.
Gary Zhu, co-founder of the fruit retail website, youguo.com, said Chinese consumers were now increasingly willing to pay for food safety and quality.
“While we see kiwis rotting in the fields in some areas because of bad sales, the fresh jujube in Xinjiang, which can cost four times as much as those produced in northern China, often sells out quickly due to its good quality,” he said.
He said a surge in China’s demand for prime fruits in the past five years had led to numerous kinds of fruits from all continents – except for the Antarctica – being shipped to the mainland.
“When we attended exhibitions abroad in the late 2000s we were often given the cold shoulder from foreign fruit traders, and now we just sit at home and receive numerous invitations from foreign fruit importers,” he said.
Bananas from Ecuador, kiwis from New Zealand, and cherries from Chile are all flooding into the world’s second largest economy at a rapid rate.
“We learned from fruit associations that the huge sales of avocados in China have prompted many people in South America to change their jobs,” he said. “Some companies have torn down their factories so they can [use the land] to start growing avocados.”
Zhu said the strong demand was – and would continue to be – driven by the mainland’s growing middle class, who were prepared to pay for peace of mind over food safety, he said.
According to the Chinese Mass Affluent Report 2015 by Forbes China, nearly 14 million people in China had investable assets of between US$100,000 and US$1 million by the end of last year.
Pagoda, a leading quality greengrocer chain, based in Shenzhen, is currently opening up more than 10 new stores in Shanghai every month.
Established in 2003, the company had up to 200 stores over its first 10 years, but in recent years has now expanded to more than 1,000.
Yu Huiyong, chairman of Pagoda, said he was not worried about all the new stores making profits.
“In some ways, demand for fruit is fixed, but in other ways it can also be flexible,” he said. “For example, when a consumer thinks a particular fruit is tasty, then he may want to eat more, but if [he doesn’t like it] he can simply stop eating it.”
He said his company was focused on quality fruit products to ensure its customers wanted to buy more after their initial purchase.
A decade ago only 15 per cent of its products were imported, but now up to 50 per cent of the fruit on sale was shipped from abroad, he said.
Poor awareness about domestic brands, low productivity and concerns about food safety are the main reasons why local fruit growers were struggling.
Seeing opportunities in the rising demand for prime food, numerous organic farmers have emerged in the mainland over the past few years.
In mega cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, many growers and retailers are embracing traceability systems to track manufacturing and processing.
However, the lack of regulations in line with international standards and poor self discipline of some companies have hindered consumers to rebuild their trust.
Despite the arrival of some new brands in recent years, including Chu Orange, oranges grown by former “Tobacco King” Chu Shijian, and Liu Kiwis, named after Liu Chuanzhi, founder of the Chinese computer maker, Lenovo, which has dabbled in agriculture, there are few well-known mainland-produced fruit brands.
Zhu said: “While employing five or six people is enough to run a farm of several thousand mu [about 133 hectares] in the United States, in China, with the same manpower, we are able to run one measuring several dozen mu [about 1.6 hectares,” Zhu said.
Zhang said: “The cherries from the US may have travelled such a long distance to reach us, but they’re almost the same price of those grown at home, or sometimes even cheaper. So why wouldn’t I buy the better ones from across the Pacific?”
