Trade and Enterprise (NZTE)’s fresh seafood campaign on the popular Chinese Internet retail site Tmall is expected to be a huge success.Between 9 April and 15 April, Chinese shoppers are able to buy live seafood fresh from New Zealand, and then have it packaged and air freighted to Shanghai within 36 hours. Within 72 hours, the seafood orders are in the hands of Chinese consumers across the country.
“This channel gives New Zealand companies access to efficient and scalable ways to expand sales in China, so we are very excited to have our first New Zealand promotion with Tmall.com,” said Mike Arand, NZTE Shanghai trade commissioner, in a press statement.
The week-long Tmall promotion, featuring fresh live Greenshell mussels, paua, geoduck, Bluff oysters and Pacific oysters and clams, makes perfect sense since China is New Zealand’s largest seafood market. Last year, the country’s seafood exports to China topped USD 376 million (EUR 271 million) — up 19 percent over the previous year.
NZTE and Tmall have been developing the promotion for quite some time, Arand told SeafoodSource. “New Zealand Minister of Trade, Tim Groser, originally seeded the idea when he met current Tmall CEO Jonathan Luk, who is a huge fan of New Zealand. They discussed using Tmall (their B2C platform) for New Zealand food and beverage sales and promotion,” Arand said.
New Zealand seafood suppliers taking part in the campaign include PauaCo, Pure New Zealand Greenshell Mussels, Ngāi Tahu Seafood, Pacific Marine Farms and Talley’s. The supply chain manager for the week-long promotion is Oceanus, which has been importing, promoting and distributing New Zealand seafood in China since 2011.
The New Zealand seafood promotion is expected to perform very well, particularly since a similar campaign with Alaskan seafood last year resulted in a total of 50 metric tons supplied to Chinese consumers.
However, Arand did not want to say whether or not NZTE and Tmall would conduct a similar seafood promotion in the future.
“Before confirming the next steps, we will be assessing and soaking up key learnings from this promotion,” Arand said. “While we have not confirmed the next collaboration, we are working with Tmall as well as other high profile B2C online partners around future possibilities for other product sectors, including fruit, dairy, meat, and natural products.”
