Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy today announce the release of Opportunities for New Zealand Dairy Products in South East Asia, which assesses possible build, buy and niche strategies across seven dairy consumer product categories in six South East Asian countries.
These categories include drinking milk products, yoghurt, condensed/evaporated, cheese, butter, ice-cream and infant milk formula.
“In the past five years, New Zealand’s trade with ASEAN has grown at a rate second only to China. New Zealand is the largest supplier of milk powder to South East Asia and boasts a strong import share across most major dairy products,” Joyce said.
ASEAN is New Zealand’s fourth largest trading partner.
New Zealand has free trade agreements with ASEAN as a group and with Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia separately. A key initiative of the upcoming Business Growth Agenda update is to improve our engagement as a country within the ASEAN region, Joyce said.
There has been significant recent investment by dairy companies in the manufacture of products such as infant formula and UHT milk, Guy said.
“We are also seeing the emergence of a number of niche players with a focus on the premium end of the market.
The report said South East Asia is the next logical market for NZ's consumer-ready dairy exporters who are looking to expand. It is the next closest market after Australia.
The consumer dairy markets in South East Asian is a US$16.8 billion industry and the region has a population of 583 million.
The report said NZ has been supplying the region with milk and meat products for over 100 years so consumers have an awareness of NZ as being a quality source of products.
Because of its tropical environment the region is limited in the ability to produce dairy produce efficiently itself.
Under the Business Growth Agenda, the Government has made major investments to encourage innovation, productivity and diversification in New Zealand’s food and beverage industry, for example through the Food Innovation Network.
The Opportunities for New Zealand Dairy Products in South East Asia report builds on existing initiatives to grow and build value in this sector. It complements the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s 2014 report What does Asia want for dinner? (available at www.foodandbeverage.govt.nz), the New Zealand Sectors Report Series, and is the latest in MBIE’s Food and Beverage Information Project series.
It was commissioned from Coriolis Research and is available for download here
