Artem Belov: Producers' cooperation is needed to promote dairy products to the Chinese market

‘We discussed the addition to the program for promoting Russian products to the Chinese dairy market and we understand that several companies will not be able to afford it,’ the speaker believes. ‘There should be a cooperation of producers.’

According to the expert, China is a very attractive and competitive market, where leading international companies operate. At the same time, Russian agricultural business, including dairy business, is small by global standards. Moreover, the main issue is not only the volume of supplies, but also the resources for investing large-scale projects.

‘If we talk about a single concept of promotion and investment in exports, we are talking about tens of millions of dollars,’ the head explained. It is impossible to do this without cooperation. Businesses need to realize the need to unite in order to systematically enter the Chinese market and promote the B2C category, get on the shelves of stores. In fact, the Chinese do not know anything about Russian milk and dairy products, and these needs to be seriously dealt with.

Currently, only the largest companies - Komos, EkoNiva, Milcom, Galaktika - supply B2C products to China, but so far we are talking about small volumes that are planned to increase. However, in order to break into the Chinese market, according to the speaker, it is necessary to form an appropriate infrastructure – marketing and logistics, which is possible only based on cooperation, because the scale of investments is very significant.

‘The situation is much simpler for the export of B2B products,’ the expert concluded. ‘In this category, individual companies producing whey and milk powder can be quite competitive. Moreover, now we are competing according to the parameters that are presented in the Chinese market.