Four years on, int'l expo provides greater stage for global businesses

The fourth China International Consumer Products Expo, which was held from April 13 to 18, broke records for scale, as well as for numbers of new products, visitors and exhibited brands.

A total of 4,019 brands from 71 countries and regions were presented at this year's six-day expo in Haikou, the capital of south China's Hainan Province, with those figures respectively increasing 19 percent and 9 percent from last year, according to organizers.

A whopping 1,462 new products were released during the expo, up 45 percent year on year, and the number of visitors to the main venue increased 16 percent to 373,000.

The annual expo is China's only national-level consumer products exhibition, and it is the largest consumer expo in the entire Asia-Pacific region.

Non-medicinal sleep solutions provider Air Nutri Solution Inc., which is based in Vancouver, Canada, raked in a revenue of more than 3 million yuan (422,416 U.S. dollars) at the expo and has already decided to attend the fifth expo next year, said Li Jingming, assistant to the company's chairman.

Including Air Nutri, a total of 36 companies on Thursday signed contracts to attend the fifth expo next year.

Global businesses in attendance this year displayed novel and upmarket products, seeking business cooperation deals and hoping to woo Chinese consumers.

As the world's second-largest economy, and with a population of 1.4 billion, China has a huge, ever-expanding consumer market.

The country's retail sales of consumer goods climbed 4.7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2024. Final consumption contributed 73.7 percent to GDP growth in the first quarter, according to the latest data, a clear sign of the Chinese people's growing readiness to spend.

A government work report in March said that the country will expand domestic demand and promote sound economic flows this year, while promoting steady growth in consumer spending.

CP Group has attended all four expos. The Thai corporation this year brought with it more products than it did in 2023, including snacks, poultry, coffee, tea and wine.

"We hope that when people mention Thailand, they will not only think of all kinds of daily necessities, but also more Thai food," said Bu Mengxuan, who works for the group.

Alongside their expanding spending power, Chinese consumers are now more interested in high-quality products, Bu said, and the group's products meet the demand of the Chinese consumer market, which also brings benefits to the entire industrial chain.

China has been Thailand's largest trading partner for many years. Statistics show that in 2023, the total trade volume between China and Thailand was 126.3 billion U.S. dollars, and the direct investment of Chinese enterprises in Thailand totaled 4.6 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 109 percent.

As the guest of honor at this year's expo, Ireland made use of its 500-square-meter national pavilion to showcase whiskey distilleries, a barn market, a golf experience zone, a fashion and culture gallery, and other attractions.

In the Irish pavilion, David Wang, managing director of Haisi Food Co., Ltd., signed contracts totaling 358 million yuan with business partners from China's Liaoning and Guangdong provinces.

The Haikou-based joint venture has a total investment of 500 million yuan and was established last year to engage in husbandry byproduct processing. It is expected to begin operations within the year, providing some 5,000 jobs once fully operational.

"We have made deals with our parent company in Ireland to import materials there and process them into pre-prepared foods such as beef tripe and chicken feet," he said, adding that the company has already received orders for its first batch of products.

Derek Lambe, economic counsellor at the Embassy of Ireland to China, said the expo is a valuable platform to facilitate people-to-people contact, through which partnerships and links are established, and this can help improve trade and investment.

Global trade and investment are win-win for everybody concerned, he said.