The memo will first introduce the basic information of China’s fruit market. Then, the memo will discuss China’s fruit industry environment and analyze the current situation of the development of China’s fruit market. And also, the memo will talk about China’s international fruit trade and the prospects, trends, and investment opportunities about China’s fruit market.
Since 1993, China has become the world’s largest producer of fruit. In 2008, due to the global financial crisis, the fruit industry generally appeared sluggish. The fruit business is in its downturn and falling profits. In 2009, with China’s economic stimulus plan and the recovery of global economy, China’s fruit market gradually recovered from the shock of financial crisis and backed into the benign development track. Fortunately, during 2009, China’s orchard planning area is 11.1395 million hectares, and the total amount of fruit production is 20 million tons. The quantity of production is the first over the world. And China’s per capita orchard area is 83.5 square meters. Fruit yield per capita is 15.28 tons, which is slightly higher than the world average.
China is the largest country of fruit production in the world. In 2013, the fruit production has more than 60 million tons, accounting for about 14% of global production. Fruit become the third largest planting products after grain, vegetable in China. And also fruit has become an important growth in increasing farmer’s income. However, its share in international fruit trade is very small. Compared with developed countries, China has a big gap in fruit commodity quality, variety and quality of processed products in international market. China’s fresh frozen fruits export is only 1.2% of the total domestic production, accounting for 2% of the international fruit trade. And its price is only half of the international average price. The basic reasons are the poor quality fruit, no well brand, and its low degree of commercialization process.
Fruit resources are very abundant in China, which is known as the “mother of the world garden”. China’s fruit has been mainly selling in domestic market, and its export proportion is very small. Fruit is a labor-intensive product, and China is famous for abundant labor resources. In terms of cost and price, China has a strong competitive advantage. However, the fruit quality competitiveness is weak in China. The majority of fruit has poor appearance, regularity, shape, color and flavor. And fruit pesticide residue problem is serious. Generally speaking, China’s high quality fruit rate is about 30%, high-grade fruit reaching export standards is less than 5%. However, high quality fruit rate in other leading exporter is as high as 70%, high-grade fruit accounted for about 50% of the total amount of export. What’s more, postpartum commercialization is near 100% in developed countries. However, commercial processing of fruit in China is less than 1% of total output.
Broadly speaking, the prospects of China’s fruit market are optimistic. Nevertheless, the overall fruit industry still stays in inefficient and small-scale operation level and science, technology, and information application level still lags far behind foreign countries, together with peasants’ limit level of education. To be optimistic, China’s fruit trade market is highly complementary with neighboring countries. For example, Southeast Asian countries can only produce tropical and subtropical fruit, which provide a broad market for Chinese deciduous fruits such as apples and pears. As long as China foster strengths and circumvent weakness, focusing on quality, storage, processing, packing, shipping, and marketing strategy, it will make fruit comparative advantage into competitive advantage.
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