Australian company to build grape brand for China
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 27, 2015
An Australian company is to cooperate with a local government in southwestern China's Yunnan Province to build a new Chinese grape brand for the national market.
On July 23, GoConnect's Chinese Go Zhongshe Ltd.signed an agreement with the Jianshui County Grape Cooperative, and Jianshui Trade Development Board, representing the Jianshui County Government, at an official ceremony held in the provincial capital of Kunming.
Under the Agreement, Go Zhongshe has secured exclusive supply of the entire annual production of acceptable grade table grapes of the Jianshui County vineyard from the Jianshui County Grape Cooperative and Jianshui Trade Development Board from the 2016 harvest commencing next March.
The ceremony was attended by senior government officials who oversee the agricultural industry of Jianshui County, the full Board and management of Go Zhongshe, senior trade commissioners of Austrade China regions, directors of the National Australia Bank office for Greater China, and a number of senior local and provincial government officials of Yunnan Province including the Secretary General of Yunnan International Cultural Exchange Center.
The Jianshui County vineyard is of a substantial scale. Its current year production of 180,000 tons of high quality table grapes is 50 percent more than the entire 2014 production of table grapes in Australia. According to the Jianshui County Grape Cooperative, the annual sales volume can reach 2.97 billion Yuan (US$478.2 million). However, it has been hampered by the lack of a strong brand image so that the price of the grapes has always been much lower than imported American and Australian grapes with the same level quality.
Go Zhongshe, working closely with the Jianshui Trade Development Board, is also working to establish a new sales distribution networks for the Jianshui table grape products, having held discussions with a number of major Australian agricultural and food producing companies with a view to a partnership to introduce high quality and a safe brand image into China's agricultural processing industry commencing with the Jianshui County vineyard.
The Jianshui County vineyard has been operating for more than 12 years and is professionally managed, achieving a yield of about 30 tons per hectare, more than twice the yield per ton produced by other major grape producing and exporting nations such as Chile, Argentina, Italy and South Africa. The entire table grape production of the Jianshui County vineyard is sold in China, representing about two percent of annual domestic consumption.
Negotiation on an agreement is also being finalized with one of China's major retail groups with over 30 years of experience in China's retail market, the Swashes group, which has retail outlets throughout China. It will establish a special Jianshui product aisle within all its supermarkets including its over 300 direct and associated retail outlets throughout China and on its online sales platforms.
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