China is the world's largest fruit producer and consumer market, producing large volumes of apples and citrus. Thanks to population and income growth, and urbanization, China's fruit consumption has continued to increase. Over the past two years, China's exports of fresh and dried fruits and nuts have been in good shape. Both the export volume and value have achieved an increase of more than 10%. But, due to Covid-19, the national import volume of fresh and dried fruits and nuts dropped by 9.6% between January and November 2020.
Imports: import volume fell by 9.6%
China’s fruit import and export trade, accounting for more than 6% of the global fruit trade, continues to maintain steady growth. From 2015 to 2020, the national import value of fresh and dried fruits and nuts continued to grow, but in 2020, the import volume dropped by 9.6%. This is mainly due to Covid-19, which has impacted logistics and affected imports. The top ten fruits imported in the first half of 2020 include fresh durians, fresh cherries, table grapes, and bananas, of which fresh durians are highest in import value. Thailand is the top exporter in terms of import value. Durian is a well-known tropical fruit originated from Malaysia. Among Southeast Asian countries, Thailand has the largest planting, and China imports a large volume of fresh durians from Thailand, which accounts for more than 90% of the imports.
Exports: over 10% increase in volume and value
China is the world's largest fruit producer and consumer market, producing large volumes of apples and citrus. Over recent years, China’s exports of fresh and dried fruits and nuts have been in good shape. Both the export and export value have achieved growth of more than 10%. Between the period between January and November 2020, China exported 3.33 million tons of fresh and dried fruits and nuts, an increase of 10.6% year-on-year. The export value reached 5.9 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%. In the first half of 2020, China’s top 7 categories of fruit exports include fresh apples, citruses, pears, lemons and limes, and table grapes. Among them, the export value of fresh apples ranks top. The category with the largest increase in exports was fresh pears. The top two destination markets were Vietnam and Thailand in terms of the export value.