PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2018

47 TRADE SHOW REVIEW PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 06/18 www.petpla.net TRADE SHOW review Chinaplas 2018 & the Chinese beverage market Records were shattered at the 2018 Chinaplas: 180,701 visitors attended the four-day event, which was held for the first time at the new exhibition venue in Shanghai. Since Shanghai’s former venue was no longer able to cope with capacity, the show moved to the world’s largest purpose-built facility, the National Exhi- bition and Convention Center (NECC). The exhibition covered an area of 340,000m 2 , an increase of 100,000m 2 compared to the Shanghai edition two years ago. Some 3,948 market leaders exhibited and brought cutting-edge solu- tions to the visitors from 150 countries during the show period. While occasionally Chinese company brochures with advertising imprints such as “the largest European moulds copying manufacturer in China” caught the eye of western visitors, reactions were generally positive, particularly on visitor numbers and, above all, on the technological advances amongst the local exhibits. Chinaplas 2019 will rotate to Guang- zhou, running from May 21-24, 2019. The Chinese beverage market Beverages in PET are on an upward trend in China. According to data from Euromonitor, since 2013 the market has increased by just under 12% (96,338.5 million units) to 107,787.8 million units. For 2017, the experts of Euromoni- tor expect a further increase of almost 6% compared to the previous year to 114,118.3 million units. While sales of bottled water fell from 5% in 2015 to 4.2% in 2017 and are expected to dip further to 2.8% by 2021 (see PETplanet 5/2018, page 9), China still remains one of the biggest bottled water markets globally with a wide choice of brands and wells. Especially waters with an extra, such as added minerals or purification are what Chinese customers are willing to pay for. Growth markets for PET are also seen in the juice segment as well as in dairy products like yogurt drinks, as Jerry Yang, Sales Director for Greater China from Sipa tells: “Today Chinese customers are much more health conscious as they were a few years ago. For the beverages seg- ment this means that less sugar products are preferred by the Chinese market. And also dairy drinks are becoming more and more popular; this at the same time rep- resents a growth opportunity for PET. The big dairy company Yili already invested in PET filling lines for their products and likely others will follow.” Looking ahead, market researching company Mintel forecasts the dairy market to grow at a 6.6% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in value, to reach RMB349.7 billion (US$54.4 billion) in 2022. Despite consistent sales growth, Mintel Market Sizes data shows that annual per capita volume consumption for major dairy products remains low compared to other countries. For example, per capita volume milk consumption in China is 14.3l, com- pared to 36.8l in Japan and 51.7l in the U.S.; per person consumption of yoghurt in China is 3.43kg, 4.92kg in the U.S. and 9.66kg in Japan. Summer Chen, senior food and drink analyst at Mintel, said, “Dairy consumption in China is still low when compared to Japan, where con- sumers share a similar dietary tradition to China. Mintel research indicates that China’s dairy market growth will be driven by increased consumption, resulting from the expansion of consumption occasions, a value increase due to the rising price of raw milk, and consumers trading up to more premium options. When we look specifically at the yoghurt market, thanks to the recent fad for ambient yoghurt, the category is now leading not only in China’s dairy market, but among all food and drink products.” IMPROVE LINE EFFICIENCY by 10% OR MORE CONTACT US TODAY TO LEARN MORE! AGRINTL.COM | +1.724.482.2163 | [email protected] 1 MEASURE 2 CONTROL 3 OPTIMIZE PROCESS PILOT ® Blowmolder management easy as . . . part 1