China takes in a huge amount of imported fruits every year.

However, the cost of shipping has been continuously rising for more than a year, there is a temporary shortage of shipping containers, and the Covid-19 pandemic is still raging.

These factors undoubtedly present importers and exporters with a number of challenges.

Some importers shared their experience and the market trends of imported fruits in China.

Global shipping capacity is a problem, importers reduce import volume to reduce risk.

The problems with global shipping have been ongoing for more than a year now.

In many areas exporters are unable to secure cargo space.

Manager Zhang, a spokesperson for the import department at Zhejiang Xiangguo Trade, said: “Take Peruvian oranges as an example, we used to import around 5 shipping containers per week, and the supply volume was always stable.

Now, however, the port has a backlog of shipping containers.

Sometimes the 20 containers that were supposed to arrive over a period of 4 weeks all arrive at the same time.

The unreliability of shipping creates a lot of uncertainty in the market.

Even worse, the extended shipping period affects the product quality of our import fruit.

Sometimes the fruit has begun to rot because the shipment was delayed and the shipping containers were stuck in port.

Even a single rotten fruit can affect the entire crate and reduce the overall product quality.”

Apart from oranges and tangerines, imports of Peruvian avocados and several other fruits from Southern hemisphere experienced the same problem.

A Shanghai-based importer of South American bananas said: “In addition to shipping problems, the sudden rise of Southeast Asian bananas also weakens the position of South American bananas in the Chinese market.

We reduced our import volume of South American bananas by nearly 60% this year.” Consumers […]