The Chinese bakery business is booming, but the market is also extremely volatile. There is no better moment to enter the Chinese market for suppliers of any bakery ingredient than now.
I have collated a few statistics that are recent enough to give a rough impression of the size of the market.
The first table indicates the development of the value of the market and the projection of the near future.
Some interesting details about consumer behaviour:
Whether online or offline, women are still the main consumers of baked goods in China.
In terms of age, 70% of consumers are between the ages of 21 and 40.
In terms of price, consumers spending RMB 20 – 40 in a single consumption constitute the largest segment (35. 8%).
The next table shows the number of bakery shops in a selected group of major cities. This tells something about the geographic distribution. However, the smaller provincial cities currently show the highest growth.
We should not forget the focus issue of this blog: food ingredients. This graph shows the major cream suppliers to the Chinese baking industry. As you can see, the market still consists of a few major brands and a large number of small suppliers.
The other day, we had lunch in a local restaurant in Beijing, when I saw an unknown beer on the menu: Weijixiong Craft Beer. I had to try it, obviously. The name alone is peculiar, because it resembles Beijixiong, polar beer.
It came in a can, indeed with a polar beer on the front, also indicating that is a beer with Russian flavour. Russian foods and drinks are popular in China, so that information sells.
On back you can read the ingredients:
Barley malt, wheat malt, yeast, water
So it used fewer cereals than Xibei’s craft beer that I reported on earlier, but at least it is a whole malt beer, rather than the average Chinese pilsner, that is brewed with a high ratio of unmalted grains.
Weijixiong is produced in Shandong. Another information channel claims that the production is supervised by Paulaner.
I goes well with Chinese food and it offers an attractive alternative that a restaurant can put on the menu next to the ‘safe’ choices like Yanjing or Qingdao.
Chinese New Year is on February 10 this year and regular readers of this blog know that Chinese are now preoccupied with buying stuff for the Spring Festival, the official name for Chinese New Year, and most of it will be food and drinks.
I happen to be in China at the moment to celebrate with family and friends, but obviously also to observe the latest trends. I visited Beijing’s annual New Year Fair in the Agricultural Exhibition Centre. In this post, I want to focus on the foreign influences in this year’s fair.
Russia
Russian products are by far the most important foreign foods offered on the fair. Some of them are imported, while others are produced in China, in particular in Harbin. Harbin is the home of the famous lieba, a word derived from the Russian word for bread ‘hljeb’. A big stand from Harbin also offers various Russian style sausages.
In the middle of the fair is a large space set up as a supermarket, with an entrance and an exit with the cashier. It offers a broad range of goods, including some non-food products. I am simply providing a few pictures of milk powder, chocolate, cookies, and pasta.
Australia
Australia is the second nation in terms of volume. I saw three or four stands with Australian food, in particular oatmeal.
New Zealand
There was one stand with products from New Zealand, with wine as the most visible. That was especially interesting considering that no stand offering Australian products was selling wine. A few wines were offered for exceptional low prices (for Chinese standards).
Spain
A stand promoting Spanish ham is positioned near the entrance. Interestingly the same stand is advertising with ‘pizzas with Spanish ham’.
Romania
The Romanian stand was exclusively selling wines from Romania and Moldova. The Romanian importer and his Chinese aide were selling actively, offering free tasting of several wines. On the other hand, the importer was not prepared to give special prices for the New Year, except for a 6-bottle box of the cheaper red wine.
Indonesia
Indonesia was present exclusively with coffee, including the prestigious kopi luwak.
Contact me for tailor made market research on the spot
Ice wine is originally a German product. Due to global warming, Germany has now been overthrown by Canada as the largest producer. Interest in iced wine is growing worldwide and, as usual, this quickly arouses the interest of Chinese entrepreneurs. I tasted ice wine at a producer in Yunnan province in December 2023.
Ice wine
Ice wine was actually discovered by chance. When you expose grapes to frost for a few nights before harvesting, the fruits dry out. As a result, the sugar content becomes higher. In addition, this delayed harvest also gives free rein to fungi that feed on the sugars and convert them into aromatic substances. That combination of concentration and mould gives the juice and the wine that is made from it the typical aroma of ice wine. Ice wine can be made from different white grapes, but in Canada the Vidal grape is the favourite.
Weixi
A Beijing entrepreneur, a New Zealand winemaker and the local government of Weixi Prefecture in Yunnan Province imported and planted stock of the vidal grape from Canada in Weixi in 2009. This location has been selected as the most suitable for this grape after a long comparative study. The area is located in the subtropical zone, but at 2300 meters above sea level, so that warm sunny days alternate with cold nights, many with sub-zero temperatures, ideal for the production of ice wine.
Grapes
Upon arrival at a local guest house in Tacheng, a village in the Weixi region, we left for the winery located higher on the mountain. From the car we saw fields of vines on both sides of the car. Most of that village’s farmers bred grapes. The grapes were still hanging on the sticks, even though it was already at the end of December, but did not make an attractive impression at first glance. They were shrivelled and closer we also saw white fungal threads. Then arrived at the company.
Lapu Valley
It turned out to be a state-of-the-art winery. From the outside it didn’t seem too big, but on the way to the office we saw a hall with shiny stainless steel fermenters and storage vessels; according to the manager imported from Italy. The company is built against a slope so that it is a lot deeper than it seems from the outside. The company is called Lapu Valley Winery, named after the Tibetan name of the river that flows through the valley. Of course, it has also been noted that many wines from countries such as Chile or Australia are called XX Valley. Farmers in the area who have switched to grape cultivation deliver their produce to Lapu Valley, which makes wine from it in a modern way.
Three products
In a special tasting hall we were presented with three wines, as usual in order of intensity: dry, semi-dry and sweet. The dry wine is not the biggest product, but it is the most special. Sweet wines are the usual product made from the Vidal grape. As far as I know, Lapu Valley is the only winery that also produces dry wine from it. The dry wine is remarkably light in taste, but still retains the typical aromas of the Vidal grape. The semi-dry wine is less special, but according to the manager it is most appreciated by Chinese guests. It fits well with a Chinese meal that typically consists of several dishes, which you eat simultaneously. Personally, as a European, I would prefer the dry version. The ice wine is a true revelation. As far as I’m concerned, this one compares with the top brands.
Small volume
It is unlikely that we will see Lapu Valley wines for sale in outside China any time soon. The production is still too small to think of international promotion. They have already won a bronze medal in China. A number of Western restaurants in major cities like Shanghai have purchased wine from Lapu Valley and there is also a buyer in Hong Kong. In order to produce more income, the company also sells its bottling and packaging capacity to other companies. During our visit we saw that the employees were busy bottling a red wine imported in large barrels for a trading house elsewhere in the region.
Peverelli on Chinese food and culture 