Dole China: Confidence in Phillipines banana export market

After Japan, China is the second largest importer of Philippine bananas. However, recent changes in trade policies between China and the Philippines have created some uncertainties in the banana import business. Additionally, a number of natural disasters have hit the main banana producing areas in the Philippines since 2014, thus, total output of Philippine bananas has declined accordingly, and the banana volumes exported to China have been directly affected.

Although the overall market conditions are challenging, Dole’s banana import business keeps on growing. This mainly benefits from the following advantages. First, Dole operates a large area of managed banana plantations as well as long term relationships in purchasing from growers under long term arrangements. Second, through years of Dole brand building and strong consumers’ relationship forging, Dole has broad sales channels across China - famous supermarkets/stores cooperating with Dole are spread all over China's largest cities and districts. Third, in terminal sales, Dole has well-trained promoters across the country.

Regarding future developments of the banana import market in China, Dole is quite confident. In Dole’s view, in comparison to domestic bananas, the imported banana industry has mature industrial planning and well established industrial standards and the stability of our product quality is high, therefore, imported bananas have a considerable market growth opportunity.