Nordmilch cautions on China trade

Germany’s largest processor milk, the Bremen-based Nordmilch, warns that the worldwide predictions of strong growth in Chinese dairy product imports over the next years may be overoptimistic.

The national market and price reporting agency ZMP backs the unexpected announcement from Nordmilch by also issuing a statement pointing out that while Chinese inland dairy product consumption has certainly increased five-fold in the last decade the majority of this had been covered by milk produced in China.
The four billion kg milk per year Nordmilch has its own office in Beijing and distribution network in parts of the country and has been exporting German dairy products for some years. In 2006 it predicted that its Asian export trade would double within three years. Other regions such as South Korea have lived up to this prognosis so far, but now the dairy cautions that dairy sales in China are falling away from the predicted sales graph.
One indicator of the situation, explains Nordmilch, is that per capita consumption of dairy products in the important population centres of Beijing and Shanghai has not increased since 2003