A Newcastle vegan snack producer is breaking into the Chinese market with its popular vegan beer snacks made from roasted chickpeas.
The snack brand, founded by Malaysian siblings Gregory and Gracia Goh, are now selling in China online through the Great British Food Store on the country’s largest social media platform, WeChat.
The Great British Food Store, just set up by Business West, one of the UK’s largest Chambers of Commerce, is already selling 20 UK food and drink brands on WeChat which has a user base of 1.2 billion.
Greg Goh, co-founder of the Newcastle-based company, and who has already made sales on the platform said: “The WeChat initiative marks one of our early export opportunities to the market which is really exciting.
“Since the initiative, we have been receiving interest from the region about Cheeky P’s which we feel speak volumes about the versatility and appeal of our snacks.”
James Monk, commercial director of Business West, commented: “Lots of companies like Cheeky P’s have recognised that China is a great sales opportunity for them.
“The rapidly expanding middle classes there are ripe as an audience for quality UK food and drink products.”
The vegan snacks have been shipped to China and re-labelled in Chinese by Elanders UK of North Tyneside, an international logistics group with 11 operations in China.
The snacks are then shipped to Elanders bonded warehouse in Shanghai. This enables Chinese customers to browse the WeChat store online and have orders sent to their homes within 24 hours.
Elanders managing director, Kevin Rogers said: “This Cross-Border- E-Commerce offers the simplest model for UK brands to sell to Chinese consumers and expand their export footprint.
“As the Chinese travel, they get a taste and palate for foreign goods, and they have a really good affinity with the UK.
“They see British products as having heritage and high quality.
“This initiative by Business West is right on the money because e-commerce in China is just insane. They buy everything online and WeChat is a very powerful tool.”
James Monk of Business West added: “Getting into China is not one of the easiest of markets.
“We have taken apart the entire supply and transit chain to find a solution to make it viable for these smaller companies like Cheeky P’s to enter trading with China.”
