Trump's trade tariffs push Egyptian oranges to Shanghai fruit shops

The trade war between the United States and China is presenting opportunities for fruit distributor Sunmoon Food Co., as the company is now shipping navel oranges from Egypt, kiwis from Italy and apples from Poland into China for the first time ever. The produce is to fill the gap created when the Asian nation retaliated by slapping tariffs on U.S. fruit.

Sunmoon is not by any means a big company if one compares them to Fresh Del Monte Produce, for instance. Where the latter had a revenue of $4.1 billion last year, Sunmoon only had a turnover of $45 million. But the new business it’s doing in China underscores how the tariff tit-for-tat between the world’s two biggest economies is reshaping global trade flows. China imported $6.2 billion worth of fresh and dried fruit and nuts last year, up nearly ten-fold from 2015, according to customs data.

“As with any trade war or political upheaval, there will always be a certain re-balancing along the markets,” Gary Loh, Sunmoon’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. “Companies like ours can take advantage of this and introduce new products into new markets.”

Sunmoon counts China as its largest sales market, where it can reach 900 million mouths through its partnership with Shanghai Yiguo E-commerce Co., an Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. affiliate that owns more than half of the company.

When China raised tariffs on U.S. goods, Sunmoon responded by shipping navel oranges from a packaging house in the suburbs of Cairo to its warehouses in Shanghai. Other countries’ oranges are being tested, like the ones from Israel, Morocco and Spain. These oranges are put out in the Chinese market with the chance of increasing shipments next year if the tariffs have not been removed.

Source: Bloomberg via: www.freshplaza.com

Publication date : 9/17/2018