With the improvement of the national standard of living, the demand for fruits has become increasingly diversified, and China's fruit consumption market shows tremendous potential. Data indicates that in 2023, the scale of China's fruit retail industry reached 1427 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.5%, and it is expected that by 2026, the fruit retail market scale will reach 1.8 trillion yuan.

As the overall market size continues to expand, the fruit retail industry is interwoven with challenges and opportunities. International Food Exhibition will analyze them one by one.

Challenge 1: Intensified Market Competition

On one hand, the characteristics of high demand and high repeat purchase rates have made the fruit retail industry a popular track for new entrepreneurs. On the other hand, in recent years, fruit retail has taken advantage of the fast train of e-commerce live broadcasting, carrying out traceability live broadcasts and source shipping, which has been very active. Coupled with the addition of some emerging fruit retail chain brands, the entire market has become particularly lively.

Challenge 2: Compressed Profit Margins

Due to the long circulation path of fruits, most purchases cannot avoid the multi-level markup by middlemen. Even facing cost pressures, in order to gain an advantage in fierce market competition, retailers still have to adopt low-price strategies to stimulate consumer purchases. Since this year, the planting scale of some expensive fruits, such as durian and Sunrose grapes, has continued to expand, leading to changes in supply and demand, a sharp drop in prices, and further compression of profit margins.

Challenge 3: Changing Consumer Demands

With the changes in the economic environment and market demands, consumers have become more rational and calm, no longer simply pursuing low prices or high premium brands, but prefer choosing fruits that offer more price advantages, are healthier, fresher, and tastier, that is, a shift from cost-performance ratio to quality-price ratio. This means that the strategy of winning with price alone is difficult to attract today's consumers. In addition, the diversification and personalization of consumer demands have also put higher requirements on the upstream and downstream of the fruit retail supply chain.

While facing many challenges, the fruit retail market also contains a large number of opportunities.

Opportunity 1: Integration of Online and Offline

The fruit retail market is generally more fragmented, with traditional channels such as supermarkets, corner shops, and vegetable markets still occupying an important position. The future mainstream channel will be the deep integration of online and offline, covering all scenarios and channels.

Opportunity 2: Supply Chain Upgrade

Behind the quality-price ratio is a test of the supply chain. A strong enough supply chain and logistics system can reduce circulation costs, and can more accurately grasp consumption trends and personalized demands, strictly control the quality of fruits, and meet the needs of consumers in all aspects.

Opportunity 3: Trend of Fruit Snackification

Related reports show that fruits are gradually shifting from supplementary staple foods to leisure snacks, which not only enriches the form and consumption scenarios of fruit products but also brings about an increase in the frequency of fruit consumption and diversifies the categories of fruit consumption.

Although the fruit retail market faces many challenges, as long as we actively seize the opportunities, we will definitely be able to occupy a place in the fierce market competition.

If you would like to learn more about the food industry, please visit the SIAL China website for more information.

Source: Guo Ge Guo Pin

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