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Diary of our Trade Mission to China
By JONNY SMITH, China Market Specialist, Business West
Leaving from Bristol Airport on 16 September, Business West accompanied 11 South West SMEs from the food & drink sector on a week- long trade mission to China – here’s a report on a very successful trip.
Background First, some facts: • UK F&D exports to China increased by 50% in 2016
• Beer sales leading the way with a 500% increase
• In 2018 China will become the world’s largest market for imported F&D
• Over 20% of China’s 450m online shoppers have bought an imported product online
• China will have over 500m middle class consumers by 2025
We had been planning this trade mission alongside our partners – Santander, Milsted Langdon, Clarke Willmott and China-Britain Business Council (CBBC) – for several months and decided that the given the opportunities in China in the F&D sector and the number of high quality South West companies, it would make a great choice to take a group of companies in this sector to China.
Pre-Mission Briefings We conducted two pre-mission briefings for participating companies in order to make sure they were well-prepared for the trip and would not make the unnecessary mistakes many companies make when first visiting China. For companies taking part in our Extend Your
Global Reach programme, Business West and CBBC provided a great deal of assistance prior to the mission including IP consultation, strategy planning and in depth market research.
Day One: Market Briefing and Store Visits We kicked off our first working day with a briefing at Bank of Shanghai’s HQ. Delegates were prepared for the week’s activities with talks from CBBC on new trends in China’s F&D sector, Santander on e-commerce opportunities,
LNP China on regulatory issues and Ferrante on trademark protection.
Day Two: The Big Day! Tuesday was perhaps the most important day of the trip for many as this day featured a whole day of one-to-ones between delegates and pre- selected Chinese buyers at Shanghai’s British Centre. Companies met with up to 10 warmed- up leads and a frenetic day of meetings led to some on the spot orders for some companies.
Day Three: Nanjing No rest for our delegates as we left the hotel at 6AM to catch the high speed train to Nanjing, an affluent second tier city of eight million people with big opportunities for UK companies. The purpose of the Nanjing trip was to give delegates a sense of the opportunities outside of China’s first tier cities.
Day Four: More one-to-ones Thursday featured more one-to-one buyer meetings at the British Centre, with some new introductions and some buyers that had been present on Tuesday returning for follow up meetings. Delegates had the chance to visit the famous Yuyuan Garden before we hightailed it to the airport for our flight to Beijing.
Day Five: Beijing In the morning we visited
JD.com – one of
China’s largest and most innovative internet companies and second largest e-commerce platform – for a tour of their campus and meetings with their buyers. In the afternoon, we visited Milsted Langdon’s Chinese partner firm, Lehman Brown, for a talk on practical aspects of doing business in China and the final round of buyer meetings.
Conclusions Feedback so far from delegates has been extremely positive. The timing of the trip has also enabled companies to get a taste of the market and start initial conversations before many of them head back to China in November for the FHC show – China’s largest F&D sector event for new market entrants. The success of this mission has encouraged us to repeat the exercise targeting different sectors in 2018.
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 insight 17
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