EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

With the world rapidly growing in population, and New Zealand's land resources remaining finite, it is crucial to ensure that our agricultural produce has a comparative advantage in our export markets. China currently has a population of 1.3 billion people, and growing, and recently has been plagued with a number of food safety scares particularly in the infant formula sector. Consumers place food safety as an extremely important factor in purchasing decisions for their families, especially due to the one child policy, therefore there is a huge market for New Zealand to leverage of our good reputation in this space. New Zealand has many features that make up its brand which appeal to the Chinese consumer, including the "clean green " image. It is estimated that $18 billion is generated from this image including our exports and tourism, therefore it is important to harness this image when exporting our primary value added products to China. The purpose of this report is to understand the current Chinese market, identify opportunities and challenges for the New Zealand brand in food products, and propose recommendations based upon successful case study examples an