Asia’s premier continental trade show for fresh fruit and vegetable marketing returns to Hong Kong’s AsiaWorld-Expo Center on 5-7 September – and it promises to be the biggest and best edition to date.
Exhibitors are advised to register now to secure their space. Application forms can be downloaded from the ASIA FRUIT LOGISTICA website and applications should be made before the 28 February deadline: http://www.asiafruitlogistica.com/Exhibitors/Application/
More than 13,000 high-quality visitors from 76 different countries attended last year’s ASIA FRUIT LOGISTICA. Well over three quarters of those visitors came from Asia, representing 20 different markets across the Asia-Pacific region. Exhibitor numbers increased by more than 150, with a total of 813 exhibitors from 43 different countries taking part.
ASIA FRUIT LOGISTICA’s growth reflects the exciting expansion of fresh produce markets across Asia. Affluent consumers are demanding higher quality fruit and vegetables on a year-round basis and supply chain partners are rising to the challenge of delivering fresh produce to half the world’s population.
Asian markets have ramped up their imports of temperate fruits such as grapes, citrus, apples and stonefruit from Southern Hemisphere supplying countries over recent years, and the trend looks set to continue in 2018.
Take Chilean cherries: as of early January, the industry has already exported a record volume of 150,000 tonnes in 2017/18, with several weeks of the season still to go. Almost 90 per cent of those exports have gone to Asia, where China accounts for 94 per cent of shipments.
But it’s not just Chilean cherry exports to China that are breaking records. The value of Australia’s fresh fruit exports exceeded the AUS$1bn-mark in the 12 months to September 2017 for the first time. The record result has been driven by citrus and table grape shipments to China, with a flow-on effect for other products and markets.
Asia’s trade in tropical fruits – be it bananas or pineapples, or durian or dragon fruit – remains dominated by intra-Asia trade routes, but buyers have been looking further afield to Latin America to secure more supplies.
Meanwhile, newer-to-market products such as avocados, blueberries and western pears are gaining traction in Asia as suppliers from Europe, North America and other parts of the world step up marketing efforts to build demand among consumers not previously exposed to these products.
