The population within several significant areas of the Peoples Republic of China is  becoming wealthy. Although the percentage of the population which can be considered “middle class” is small by western standards it is growing rapidly. However, numerically, in view of a 1.3 billion population this “middle class” represents a huge wealth base.

Additionally we must remember that this wealth has been created “overnight” and as yet the Chinese middle class have not accumulated levels of personal debt commensurate with their status as is the case in the west. Consequently their disposable income is far greater than the western middle class. Demand for all consumer goods and services is huge and there is the emergence of a discerning class of people who seek out imported products deemed to be of a higher class, quality and apparent cachet or “snob value”.

The west should not therefore ignore the emergence of a potentially huge market for specialist, up-market and designer western goods (even though some of those might actually be of Chinese manufacture).

Marel Agencies has arranged deals for UK companies to sell products as diverse as electronics and chicken's feet!

On a commercial and industrial scale there is a huge demand in China for knowledge. The UK and EU governments actively encourage knowledge transfer to China which fully recognises trading realities – better to have partnerships and cooperation than secrecy and confrontation. Other enterprises which the directors of Marel are associated with are already selling specialist industrial products, manufactured in the UK, to China. This is not a one-off and products exported to China will, in the main, be high-value, low-volume products.

Volumes of individual products will always be relatively small but across a wide range of products the overall value has the potential to be very high.