On December 27, the Chinese central government held a press conference to introduce “Class B and Class B control” measures against COVID-19.
In the media, the main focus was the drop in quarantine requirements for international arrivals, but there was a paragraph that mentioned food. According to this paragraph, “preventive disinfection of incoming items will no longer be performed, and sampling inspection will no longer be performed on imported cold chain foods.” We are now waiting for the official release of this new food related regulation and seeing how local governments implement it.
As a result of our discussions with our customers, we believe that centralized warehouse supervision, nucleic acid testing, sanitization, and other policies will be canceled entirely. For factories abroad, as well as importers, this is an important new policy. Foreign factories would not be at risk of product returns due to COVID-19. Chinese customs data shows that aquatic products accounted for 80% of the 1,443 tons of frozen products returned or destroyed in November.
Chinese importers can save import costs such as COVID-19 testing, disinfection and warehouse supervision, as well as customs clearance time, greatly improving the timeliness of goods imports.
In addition, some local sales channels in some regions were concerned about imported products due to the epidemic, resulting in the repackaging of imported cold foods into domestic packages before selling. With the new entry policy for imported cold chain foods, customers no longer have to “discriminate” against imported products.
The Chinese market is currently depressed because many people are infected, but with the release of good policies, most experts have a positive view of the market for the coming year.