CALGARY – Taiwan is likely to buy more Canadian agricultural products, a major Taiwanese food distributor told delegates at a food export seminar.
“There’s strong potential (for growth), particularly in the frozen food market,” Leonine Enterprises Ltd. managing director Wen-Ping Lee said last week.
Leonine Enterprises supplies 1,500 food service and retail outlets in Taiwan.
The Taiwan government has projected a 15 percent rise in personal consumption as the country moves beyond the instability of Chinese military threats, he said.
Canada’s agri-food exports to Taiwan were worth $94 million (Cdn) in 1994, he said. Taiwan was Canada’s 17th largest agri-food buyer in 1994.
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It lifted restrictions on flour imports in February, signalling other restrictions on agricultural goods may be reduced or cut later in 1996, he said.
The Canadian Wheat Board in December projected it would sell 200,000 tonnes of Canada Western red spring wheat to Taiwan in the 1995-96 export year. The Taiwanese are expected to spend growing amounts of disposable income in restaurants and in Western-style fast food, worth about $12 billion a year, Lee said.
Growth in that sector could stimulate beef imports. Taiwan imports 45,000 to 50,000 tonnes of beef per year. More than 70 percent of it comes from Australia with the balance coming from New Zealand, the United States and Japan.
Taiwan is also the third largest importer of coarse grains after Japan and China. Canadian agri-food companies have plenty of room to expand in the Taiwanese market, Lee told delegates.
