Featured

The Keys to Successful Food Export to Asia

The rise in the Asian middle class presents enormous opportunities to exporters globally.

While makers of high-end lifestyle products may be the most obvious beneficiaries of the increasing affluence across Asia, opportunities for Australian food and beverage exporters are only just being realised.

China alone has a population of over 1.3 billion and is the world’s largest consumer market for food and beverage (F&B) goods, surpassing the United States in 2011. Not only is food consumption across Asia rapidly growing, but the region is also experiencing increasing exposure to Western society and foodstuffs. As a result diets are changing and an example in South Asia it is expected that the consumption of milk products will increase by 125 per cent by 2030. This presents opportunities for Australian primary food producers.

As the demand for a wider variety of food products across Asia increases, many countries are not equipped to produce the products. Reasons include not having a skilled workforce to produce products like speciality cheeses, or not having the farmland to produce the quantities of livestock, fruit or vegetables needed to demand.

Much has been written in the past about Australia’s opportunity to become the ‘food bowl for Asia’. With vast tracts of farming land and skilled workforces, in theory the opportunities for primary food producers in Australia to export to Asia have never been greater. However this doesn’t mean every producer in the country will automatically become a successful exporter overnight.

As the food industry grows and becomes more interconnected across the Asia-Pacific region, it is also becoming more competitive, with some commentators questioning the advantages of the recent Free Trade Agreements with Japan, China and Korea.  Mike Steketee wrote for the ABC, “Can the free trade agreement with China help Australia realise its potential in agricultural exports? There's plenty of competition out there, and to date we haven't been keeping up.”

The reality is that Australian producers face increasing pressures to get products to market in Asia quickly and meeting regional food safety requirements. For Australian food producers it is vital that they move away from manual low-tech supply chain processes towards automation.

Speed matters when exporting fresh

In such a competitive consumer-driven market it is essential Australian food producers get the right product in the right condition and quantity at the right time to retailers across Asia.

In order to increase the productivity of a food producer’s supply chain, technologies such as voice automation can support the food product ‘picking’ process within a distribution centre. Voice users commonly report productivity improvements well above 20 per cent. Voice eliminates the need to read a display screen, a paper pick list, or a purchase order, and workers obtain their next task enroute to the next location, thereby reducing downtime while travelling within the facility. The ability of voice systems to deliver picking accuracy in excess of 99.99 percent also means that the correct food orders are processed for export. This offers a large increase in a business’ throughput, customer satisfaction and profits.

Traceability in a regional marketplace

Advances in the F&B industry in Asia have brought about government regulations, driving the need for traceability of food products from point-of-harvest to point-of-sale. Those who are able to offer comprehensive traceability throughout their operations will prove most attractive to Asian food retailers. Technologies that facilitate real-time information such as 2D barcodes, smart labelling or RFID assist in meeting traceability standards.

Food safety scares in Asia from imported foodstuffs can impact on not just one, but many food producers, as it can take weeks to determine the precise location of the outbreak and in during the search farmers may have to sit back and watch as millions of dollars’ worth of produce spoils.

Advanced barcode and RFID technologies allow Australian food producers to create modern labels that detail the date and individual field where an item was grown. This kind of label, that follows a product at every stage along the supply chain, offers enhanced accountability and means regulators can pinpoint the source of potential pathogen outbreaks much faster. This saves millions of dollars.

Exporting for success

As the food industry grows and becomes more competitive across Asia, local food producers face new opportunities and challenges. The key question for Australian food producers is what technologies they can implement that will drive efficiencies and help ensure that they get their goods to export markets as rapidly as possible. Food producers who make an investment in modernising their businesses with technologies, such as voice solutions or barcode and RFID systems, will be much better positioned to meet regional export standards and regulations, as well as grow their bottom line.

 

Send this to a friend