Efforts to promote Malaysian F&B products are bearing fruit as they are now sold in more outlets, including convenience stores.

MALAYSIAN food and beverage products are making inroads in the Chinese market as an awareness and promotion programme by suppliers, retailers and the Malaysian External Trade Development Cor­poration (Matrade) intensifies.

In Beijing, imported products from Malaysia such as white coffee, cheese biscuits, fruit pudding and jelly and cheese rings are already available at over 200 7-Eleven convenience stores.

This has been a major breakthrough and an additional channel of distribution of F&B products, compared to the past when the pro­ducts were only sold at Parkson and selected Carrefour and Tesco hypermarkets.

For the first time, fruit drinks are available at 7-Eleven stores. So far, the drinks have been a hit with Chinese consumers and the 7-Eleven operator is very keen to promote more Malaysian foodstuff.

Seven-Eleven (Beijing) Co Ltd deputy sales promotion director Yu Mengmeng said the company had sold more than 700 cans of a particular tropical fruit drink from Malaysia since it was introduced to customers.

“A week after we launched a promotion of Malaysian F&B products at our 200 stores in Beijing and Tianjin, we achieved a total sales of 100,000 yuan (RM49,000). Our target is to sell 250,000 yuan (RM123,000) worth of Malaysian products.

Growing popular: A worker arranging food products imported from Malaysia at a convenience store in Beijing.

“In the past, we have sold some biscuit products from Malaysia but they did not fare well. We think that the packaging design does not suit the Beijing market,” she said in a recent interview.

She explained that the packaging trend of Malaysian biscuits that 7-Eleven imported was that of the 1980s and 90s but its customers were looking for something more attractive and trendy.

She said Malaysian suppliers had to come up with biscuit products that were different from those that were selling well in the Chinese capital.

“As for white coffee, we had sold other locally-made white coffee brands. We had little knowledge of Malaysia’s white coffee manufacturing industry until we participated in the 10th International Halal Show­case (MIHAS) in Kuala Lumpur in early April,” she said.

Seven-Eleven has entered a strategic partnership with the Matrade office in Beijing to promote several foodstuff brands for two weeks. Consumers won lucky draw prizes, such as orang utan toys, after buying Malaysian foodstuff at the 7-Eleven outlets.

Yu said the opportunity to meet the suppliers was more important than the amount of goods her company managed to procure from MIHAS.

Yu has seen encouraging sales of Malaysian F&B products at 7-Eleven stores.

She said they informed the suppliers of the latest market trends in Beijing and how important was small and convenient packaging to appeal to young working people.

DKSH (China) Co Ltd Beijing & northern region sales manager Ken Guo said that for the first time in the country, his company would trade more chocolate ingredient products from Malaysia after discovering the supply.

“In the past, we had sourced such products from Europe, which is too far for us in China. In terms of communication and culture, we feel more comfortable doing business in Malaysia and the market there is also competitive.

“The confectionery sector in Malaysia is quite developed and produces good quality biscuits and chocolate products. We will talk to two factories in Seremban and Johor Bahru to get our first container in as soon as possible and sell it to our network of top hotels in China,” he said.

Matrade senior trade commissioner Abu Bakar Yusof said 7-Eleven China made a total purchase of RM8.25mil worth of goods at a one-day business match-making session at MIHAS, which was about 4% of the total, while Parkson China was also one of the main players with a purchase value of RM5mil.

“Like 7-Eleven, Parkson would previously go through local suppliers and not import goods directly from Malaysia. This time they wanted to see for themselves what products are suitable for them,” he said.

He said the collaboration Matrade had with 7-Eleven was very successful as the franchise giant had moved from simply being a promoter of Malaysian restaurants and cuisine under the Malaysian Kitchen Pro­gramme to a strategic partner to selling Malaysian F&B products on a bigger platform.

“If the impact of the promotion of Malaysian goods at 7-Eleven is good, we will expand cooperation with them in other cities. There is bonded agreement with 7-Eleven and we can work with other local convenient stores and in future, we will explore into this,” he said.

Indeed, such creative partnership is key to making Malaysian goods a household name in China. It will not take too long for our goods to match those of our South-East Asian competitors, which have flooded the Chinese market longer than us.

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