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Walmart partners with JD.com to launch online store in China for British supermarket chain Asda

Asda’s primary offerings on JD.com will be food and health products, including items such as biscuits, coffee, tea bags, nuts, energy bars, and baby food

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An advertising board for JD.com in Nanjing. British supermarket chain Asda has opened a store on the e-commerce retail site. Photo: Reuters

Walmart is hoping to sell more British produce in China after launching a store on the country’s second largest online retailer JD.com, for its UK supermarket chain Asda.

The launch of the store – clearly an effort to attract more China’s middle-class shoppers, who increasingly crave quality foreign products – is the latest move after a strategic alliance between Walmart and the Beijing-based JD.com was agreed last year.

Walmart increased its own stake in JD.com to 12.1 per cent after selling its own China e-commerce operation to JD.com in exchange for a 5 per cent stake in the Chinese e-commerce major in June 2016.

“Walmart is delighted to provide JD.com’s 226 million customers access to Asda’s quality British products at competitive prices,” said Ben Hassing, senior vice president of e-commerce for Walmart China.

Asda’s primary offerings on JD.com will be food and health products, including items such as biscuits, coffee, tea bags, nuts, energy bars, and baby food.

An elderly British shopper enjoys a complementary glass of red wine in an Asda store in Yorkshire, England. The UK chain was bought by Walmart in 1999. Photo: Gideon Mendel/Corbis
An elderly British shopper enjoys a complementary glass of red wine in an Asda store in Yorkshire, England. The UK chain was bought by Walmart in 1999. Photo: Gideon Mendel/Corbis

Hassing said the companies expect the initial selection of products to significantly expand in the months and years ahead.

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