Hong Kong Potentially Big Food Market
(Freni IM VID BAHBBB.iN.Z.P.A. Ht'dff correspondent) HONG KONG. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere in Asia, New Zealand’s . greatest trading, potential is in what she produces best—food. But New Zealand’s greatest competition for a place in the stomachs of four million Hong Kong people is imported live, from the" world’s largest and most mysterious nation, only a few miles away. Eighty per cent of Hong Kong’s total food requirements come from Cqmmunist China, the huge, heavily populated landmass that looms over the last remaining vestige of Britain’s colonial empire—and much of this (food is “on the hoof.”
Hong Kong’s annual shopping list from the Mao market includes 120,000 head of cattle, nearly two million pigs and 10,000 goats, not to mention nearly 16m lb of poultry, vegetables and fruit.
But in spite of this, New Zealand food exporters have been able to make their mark in the last couple of years and now have steady sales ranging from prime quality topef and lamb to butter, cheese, meat extracts, chicken feet and gizzards, strawberries and frozen vegetables. New Zealand beef has such a good name that some second-class restaurants use it to -label inferior quality steaks from other countries. The Chinese delicacies of chickens’ feet and innards have sold so well that one company alone will ship in 40 tons this year, and sales of meat extracts—especially from deer, which promise legendary vigour and vitality —now top SNZS6B,SOO.
Meat sales, mainly beef, rose to more than SNZIm last year, and importers say they could use more. Imports of frozen vegetables jumped more than two and a half times to a promising $NZ87,570. Dairy products are struggling against cheap im-
ports from the E.E.C. coun-I tries and a long-standing bias I towards Australia—which has I W per cent of the butter mar- I ket—by European consumers, ’ and cheese and butter sales a tell last year. WRONG COLOUR ’ One major importer insists that New Zealand butter is I badly packed and is the ’ wrong colour for the Well-off, discerning European buyer who will go for the Austra- | lian product even though it is twice the price of Dutch I butter. New Zealand manufacturers have made surprising progress in the last two years and are making a good contribution to the total annual export figures of about SNZ4.3m. Textile yarns, newsprint, kraft paper and carpets all showed solid increases in 1969 over the previous year, and trade sources say market development is limited only by available supplies in New Zealand. Manufacturers are also selling toys, clothing, blankets, electrical and automative equipment on the fiercely I competitive Hong Kong mar- ; ket. One New Zealand company, Fisher and Paykel, Ltd, which is selling refrigerators and washing machines, received special praise from one importer tor the way it had studied the market and was prepared to change its designs to suit local requirements.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 8
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481Hong Kong Potentially Big Food Market Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 8
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