A New Rule in China May Boost Natural Cheese Demand
The renewed version of Chinese national standard for process cheese (GB25192) was implemented officially at the end of December 2022, after a long-time, contentious expert review which had once been a hot topic in China's cheese industry. The most remarkable issue being discussed was about product classification. That is, the products that are made up of less than 50 percent of natural cheese can only be called cheese food, not process cheese. In a consumer's perception, cheese food is not recognised as cheese.
The previous version of this rule, released in 2010, allowed the products that contained as little as 15 percent of natural cheese to be called process cheese. However, these process cheeses in the retail market were, strangely, not required to show the actual content of natural cheeses.
The new classification aims to standardise China's cheese industry, particularly for process cheese market which has seen some significant growth rates since 2016.
Experts said this change could possibly stimulate the consumption of natural cheeses, no matter whether the natural cheeses consumed are imported or locally produced. But some process cheese producers are worrying about the rising costs of their products and unwilling to comment the impact of this new rule.
On average, Chinese people currently consume 0.1 kilograms of cheese per capita each year, according to statistics. The recent market growth has mainly come from the process cheeses targeted for children and positioned as a nutritional food. However, the products kids like to eat are often in sweet taste and generally contains as low level as 20-30 percent of natural cheeses. The producers will have to add natural cheese level up to 50 percent or more, so as to maintain their product perception as cheese.
