A Chinese snack company signed a deal with Pakistani pine nut provider worth 300 million yuan (US $ 42 million) during the second China International Import Expo in Shanghai as the company furthers overseas efforts with opportunities brought by the Belt and Road Initiative.
With the new move, Halo Foods, Pakistan’s largest pine nut purchase and processing firm, will continue to offer pine nuts to the Chinese firm Bestore following their cooperation for over 10 years. Bestore CEO and president Yang Yinfen said that hand-peeled pine nuts are now one of the most expensive nut products for the company.
He said that both demand and output has grown rapidly with an annual increase of 20 percent. “For our company, such cooperation will help the Pakistani firm to further explore the potential of the Chinese market,” said Shahbaz Siddique, financial head of the Halo Foods.
“Globalization has been one of our key strengths. Currently, over 25 percent of our raw material comes from overseas,” Yang Yinfen said. Among overseas purchases, Belt Road economies including Malaysia and the Philippines as well as Turkey are some of the major sources.
“We are also considering and exploring some emerging markets, such as the African market,” he said. An earlier report pointed out that Chinese people consume around two trillion yuan of snack food every year following the country’s booming internet wave accelerating growth.
To date, the Wuhan-based company in Hubei province has adopted 190 types of raw materials from 32 countries and regions. It has developed over 1,000 kinds of snacks so far. Over 35 Pakistani companies are participating in textile, leather and sports goods, surgical equipment, home furnishing, and other products at the second China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai.
FISHERIES DELEGATION IN CHINA: A five-member fisheries delegation from Gwadar visited leading enterprises in aquaculture, offshore fishing and aquatic product processing in China’s Fujian province. The delegation, at the invitation of the China Economic Net, visited Fuzhou, Quanzhou and other places to examine leading enterprises.
The member of the delegation took a round of the production workshops, ports, docks, frozen storage, nursery, breeding bases and other places of the enterprises to learn more about the production scale, operation mode, deep processing of aquatic products, cold chain logistics, sales, and trade.
Through this field visit to Fujian’s seafood fishing, cold chain logistics, deep processing, and other industrial chains, it is full of expectations for the prospect of fishery cooperation between Pakistan and China. The Pakistani delegation hopes to further strengthen communication and exchanges and accelerate cooperation to achieve substantive results as soon as possible.
It may be mentioned that Prime Minister Imran Khan, during his recent visit to China, had suggested enhancing fisheries trade between the two countries. The two countries can increase cooperation in establishing fish meal factories, vessel monitoring system and fishing traceability to prevent illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing besides more exchange programs pertaining to the training of fishermen.
Trade liberalization policies of these two countries have resulted in increased commercial cohesion through fishery trade. Under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) framework and trade liberalization, a new era of enhanced fishery trade between Pakistan and China is imminent. Now, China is the largest emerging potential market for Pakistani fishery products.
