In 2020, the Chinese market for imported frozen products has been greatly impacted by the pandemic. In the beginning of 2020, the market and cold storage were closed, sales stagnated, and as we write this article, goods are overstocked in the port… China’s frozen products importers have suffered huge losses.
Will the impact of the pandemic spread to 2021?
The industry believes that in the short run, the pandemic will indeed cause a decline in sales, but in the long run, the consumption of imported cold chain food will not decrease in 2021. The biggest reason is that China domestic demand is facing a gap.
The leading expert in China’s CDC, Wu Zunyou, said at a press conference in December 21, 2020, that consumers’ risk of infection with imported cold chain foods was very low. On the same day, Zhang Wenhong, a Chinese expert on disease control and prevention, said in the CCTV news program that there were no cases of infection caused by eating cold chain food. The two experts’ views set consumers’ mind at ease.
According to the General Secretary of the cold chain committee of the China Federation of logistics and purchasing, December and January are the months of low temperature in China, once this period is over, with the improve of consumption, the demand for imported cold chain food will still be very large, and it will usher in a sustained rebound.
Whether it rebounds, how much it can rebound?
There are two sets of data for reference. One is the quantity of China’s imported meat in the first quarter of 2020: in the first quarter, China imported 951,000 tons of pork, a year-on-year increase of 1.7 times; imported 513,000 tons of beef, a year-on-year increase of 64.9%. Another data is that in 2020, China imported more than 8 million tons of pork and beef, which is double that of 2019. With the import of mutton and chicken, it is estimated that China imported more than 10 million tons of meat.
To sum up, the Deputy Secretary believes that the growth rate of China’s meat imports in 2021 may not be as high as that in 2020, but the total amount should exceed that in 2020. “It is expected that in March 2021, after the Spring Festival, as the temperature rises, if the epidemic eases, the order of imported meat will also increase”, he declared.
