The growing demand for diversified food products in China is leading food manufacturers, processors and distributors to demand enhanced cold chain logistics and transportation infrastructure nationwide, according to a new report by Jones Lang LaSalle.
“As the most populous nation in the world, China has a large and fast-growing consumer food market. Chinese eating habits are changing as incomes rise leading to higher consumption of perishables like animal protein and dairy products, as well as frozen foods,” says the report. It adds, however, that “China’s cold chain market is seriously underdeveloped” with only 15 per cent of products that should be temperature controlled currently being “handled properly” in China.
These factors, along with rising demand for the safe transportation of pharmaceutical and healthcare products across China, mean that the cold chain logistics market offers “significant opportunities” for foreign investors, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.
“The refrigerated warehouse market in particular will need massive development in order to meet the growing consumer market and an increasingly dynamic food exports sector,” the report says. In particular, the major cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are likely to develop as key cold chain logistics centres, along with major port cities, such as Dalian and Qingdao, which are integral to China’s fast-growing food export and import sectors.
