Singapore may cover a small area, but its population is growing, and its consumers are increasingly demanding high quality healthy food. Australian imports are popular, and the mature and competitive retail sector offers exporters fantastic opportunities for their health food products. That’s why Export Connect are arranging a Market Visit for Australian manufacturers and producers in April / May 2019.

Here are some of the best reasons to break into this market.

• Singapore has a growing economy, with real GDP increasing by 3.1% in 2018. Employment is high, private consumption is increasing, and the economy depends on trade and imports. Singapore’s consumers want your goods.
• A multi-ethnic country with diverse culinary influences, Singapore is interested in food, and health foods are a key growing trend. The sale of food products bearing the Health Promotion Boards “Healthier Choice” symbol is growing by 9% annually.
• The highest % value growth was recorded in Free From, Organic, and Naturally Healthy foods.
• The traditional reluctance of consumers to choose organic packaged food due to its high price tag is slowly being offset by increasing consumer awareness.
• The potential of the market is encouraging new players to enter, supported by consumer demands for products that offer to aid digestion or boost immunity.
• Singaporean consumers want quality in their products and reliability in customer service. Although online shopping is a growing trend, with most customers pretty tech savvy, household shopping is still mainly done in bricks-and-mortar grocery stores. So getting products on the ground, not just one the web is important in the food sector.

In other words, Singapore’s health food market is ripe for Australian exports, but getting out there and getting to know the market is crucial.

A Market Visit offers producers and exporters the chance to explore the market in more depth and develop in-market connections with buyers with a view to developing or strengthening export strategy. It’s also a great opportunity to link up with other food and beverage companies to develop new alliances at home and abroad.

Want to know more about why a Market Visit is worthwhile and what it can offer your company? Here’s some feedback from two previous participants – a business already selling in the market, and a company wanting to break-in:

ANNIE: We’ve been selling in Singapore for quite some time [but] we didn’t understand the changes in the market. We didn’t realise that there’s… 55 stores from Sheng Siong.

We also didn’t realise that the way of importing into Singapore has changed significantly since our last market visit. We didn’t know our competitors. Najib [did] a competitor analysis… and also a country analysis.

[We] did the training programme beforehand and it meant that when we walked in we were pre-armed to understand… and see what our next step was.

JANINE: Being a new company, two years old, we really had very little knowledge [of] who our competitors were, what sort of stores our products would be suitable for, how to get [them] there, very little about the business.

While in Singapore and Hong Kong, it was mind blowing. The number of stores we got to see, the number of buyers, the information that Najib and his team provided us beforehand… was just incredible. So we went there fully armed…

I think it was very, very helpful to go with a group of like-minded people and while some of the meetings perhaps won’t lead anywhere, I think every meeting we had, someone was interested in what we were doing. So there was no meeting that I thought was a waste of time, and I think that’s a credit to Najib, and the team. It was really very, very insightful.

We’d love to meet you at our next Market Visit and explore how we could help your business expand in the growing export markets of SE Asia. Read more here.