The Country 19/03/25: Hunter McGregor talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Shanghai-based correspondent is still cautious about any recovery in the Chinese economy but is very optimistic about how their baking sector is good for our dairy industry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our guy in Shanghai is Hunter McGregor. He's selling venison
and red meat to the Chinese. He's been a bit
of a grim reaper to be there in recent times
about the Chinese economy. And I ask you this every time, Hunter,
why change the habit of a lifetime. Surely there must
be some green shoots appearing in that Chinese economy. I

(00:20):
mean someone's buying all of our dairy products.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, good afternoon, Jamie. Yeah, there's a few green shoots
fighting around. And a bit of positivity came out of
the government yesterday with some growth figures and things like that.
You know, there's four percent sales growth and retail you know,
last month and things like that. So yeah, there's a
few positive signs. But it's still still challenging and consumer

(00:45):
confidence is still quite low. But what the government's doing
up here is they're actually, you know, they're going to
spend some money and try to turn that around. So
let's see how that goes.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Often a good barometer for consumer confidence is housing prices,
and they have been suppressed for quite a while in China.
Now if your house is worth more, you've got a
bit more equity, you feel a bit more comfortable about
spending some money.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, no, the housing market is still down. And I
was talking to someone the other day that's involved in
that industry and he said, at the moment, there's no
one buying houses in China as an investment because they
know that the market is not going to bounce back
or come or or you're not going to see any
capital growth. So you know, people are holding off and

(01:33):
you know, so that's affecting consumer confidence. But you know,
the government's here. They just came out the other day
where they're coming out with a special action plan to
boost consumption here. So they're going to try to, you know,
give it a go and let's see how that turns out.
Because you know what, traditionally, when when people up prec headwinds,

(01:55):
they put their hands in their pocket and start saving
a bit more because they're there's not too many safety
nets like in New Zealand. So they'll see how that goes.
But yeah, what, we've got a bit of warmer weather
on the way. It's always a good time of the
year at the moment, so you know, Pete, there's always
a bit of an uplift in things because people are
sort of getting out of their winter slumber and into

(02:16):
a bit of spring, so you can't complain.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
You're a Rocksburgh born and bread boy. Of course, Jimmy's
pies the fine I think they're some of the greatest
pies in New Zealand. Of course, that's baking or a bakery.
You can call in on your way through Roxburgh, play
the best little golf course in New Zealand as well.
But you've got some really fascinating stats on the baking
sector in China.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, yeah, the baking sector in China is going from
strength to strength, is continuing and growing. They're just looking
at some numbers the other day. Now they reckon that
in twenty twenty two there was about thirty nine point
eight billion dollars US dollars and sales, and it's looking
to grow to about forty nine billion this year. There's
about they reckon there's about five hundred thousand bakeries in China.

(03:01):
I'm not too sure about the number because I've read
somewhere between five hundred and six hundred thousand. There's a
hell of a lot of bakeries. But you know last year,
in August last year in Shanghai, there was four seven
hundred and eleven bakeries just in Shanghai alone, and a
lot of those bakeries are sort of they're not the

(03:22):
Chinese traditional bakeries where they have sweet bread and not
very things that we're not very familiar with. A lot
of them will be what we call foreign style bakery,
you know, very a lot of the products of bread
and everything. They will be very familiar to everybody.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Birthday cakes are also big business in China.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Oh massive, Yeah, No, they're expensive and what I find
with a lot of them, if it's not a chocolate cake,
a lot of the cakes are just a basic sort
of sponge cake with the whole heap of sort of
creamy sort of stuff around them to give them design
and stay. They're pretty not very tasteful. But I held
a lot of dairy products he used in them, which

(04:01):
is positive for the New Zealand dairy farmer, because the
dairy products are going to come from somewhere.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Absolutely, they will send as much butter as we can
over there for the baking sector. Now you're waiting with
baited breast breath breast I should rephrase that, shouldn't I
hunt baita breath for the first of the new season's
Kiwi fruit to arrive over and I know that the
red is first off the vines. Effectively, it's already on

(04:27):
a ship and you're you're going to taste some win
in the next week or so in China.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Yeah, No, they've actually just gone out with some pre sales.
I think the ship arrived sometime this week, so product
will probably be in the market next week. So it
actually bought some pre pre ordered some some some red
Kiwi fruit, so looking forward to getting my hands on that,
and then hopefully there'll be some fresh new season apples
from New Zealand hitting the market soon. So it's a

(04:53):
good time of the year and you know, quite excited
and I'm sure Zestprie and the apple industry will do
well like they have done in the past.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Absolutely, it's a great time of the year to be
in New Zealand, your home country, because the apples are
just to die for at the moment. Hunter MacGregor will
talk to you in another couple of weeks in Shanghai.
You can tell us all about your first feed of
the Kiwi fruit bread.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
We'll do it. Thanks, Jamie.