INC Report on China Nut and Dried Fruit Trade
As the year comes to an end, the INC releases reports on how the nut and dried fruit industry has been doing, with information on various nuts and their origin countries. On Nov 11, the INC released a report on China’s overall performance throughout the year. Here’s a summary of what this report revealed.
Overview
The Chinese Custom Statistics Database revealed that Chinese imports of nuts have increased significantly over the last few years. There has been a definite increase in almonds and hazelnuts between 2017 and 2020 at around 700% with other nuts following similar trends as well. Here’s a breakdown of every major nut and their import and export movement since 2017.
Pistachios Imports
It is to be noted that the in-shell Pistachio imports have almost doubled since 2017. Back then, China imported 28,642 metric tons, followed by an increase to 54,272 in 2018 and a peak in 2019 at 111,639 metric tons.
Of course due to the shipping crisis and the pandemic, the imports fell in 2020 but have consistently remained high with 57,096 metric tons shipped so far in 2021.
Almonds
The almond shipments to China have increased greatly as well with the peak occurring in 2019 at 63,480 metric tons for in-shell almonds, and 32,905 metric tons for shelled almonds in 2019, a massive increase from 5,497 in-shell and 10,672 metric tons for shelled almonds.
Macadamia Nuts
Macadamia nuts reveal an interesting pattern with exports remaining stable between 1,620 and 1,665 metric tones between 2017 and 2021 while imports increasing drastically to 25.391 in-shell Macadamia nuts in 2020 alone.
Cashews
For cashews in particular, there has been a staggering increase of 500%. In 2017, the imports were a mere 7,863 metric tons which then skyrocketed to 26,845 metric tons for shelled cashews alone.
Walnuts
Of course, in this list, the greatest increase in both imports and exports was in the walnut industry. With China importing close to 5,526 in-shell walnuts in 2020 alone. This is of course, similar in line with other years but what is amazing is the drastic increase in exports from 2019.
International shipments of Chinese in-shell walnuts grew by 900% and China exported 74,035 metric tons of in-shell and 20,523 shelled walnuts in 2019, followed by 72,458 in-shell and 23,148 shelled in 2020.
Even though exports have been recorded until August for this year, so far China has shipped 55,021 metric tons of in-shell and 27,297 metric tons of shelled walnuts.
Peanuts
Following similar trends, peanut imports increased by 370% and 260% for shelled and in-shell, respectively. With the sudden rise in peanut imports starting in 2019, a bit different from the walnuts’ trajectory.
We see a sudden rise in peanut imports at a whopping jump from 74,068 (in-shell) and 404,766 (shelled) metric tons in 2019 to a staggering 320,162 (in-shell) and 764,335 (shelled) peanut imports in 2020. The figures are already revealing this for the shipments made between January and August 2021 at 158, 548 (in-shell) and 771, 339 (shelled) metric tons in 2021.
