China :: Business :: Deals

Source : By Li Fangfang (China Daily) SHANGHAI - The global food and nutrition giant Nestle SA plans to double the scale of its investment in the Chinese coffee market during the next three years, said a top company executive. Heiko Schipper, managing director of Nestle Food & Beverage, Greater China region, said the move will support the company's plans to accelerate its business in the face of fierce competition in the coffee market with the most potential. "We are planning to double our investment in China, one of the key growth engines for our coffee business in the future," said Schipper, without disclosing further details. "Our coffee business has grown quite rapidly over the past five years, by 20 percent year-on-year on average. And we think we can further accelerate growth in the future by expending more effort and tailoring more products for the market," said Schipper. Having been involved in China for 20 years, Nestle is the leader in ...

General Motors to Test Chinese Plug-in Vehicle Market With Volt General Motors Co. (GM) will introduce its Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid car in China at an auto show on Nov. 21, and dealers will begin taking orders for the model shortly, the automaker said. This will be relatively low-volume, Kevin Wale, president of the Detroit-based companys China unit, said in a phone interview yesterday in Shanghai, declining to comment on specifics including pricing before the show in Guangzhou. Were trying to use this as a statement for technology and the beginning of the path towards electrification. GM will be first among the worlds largest automakers to sell a plug-in car in China, where rivals including Daimler AG (DAI) and Nissan Motor Co. also plan to introduce similar models. Electric-car sales in China are forecast to exceed those in the U.S. by 2020, helped by government subsidies and investment as the Asian nation, the worlds largest polluter, seeks to cut emissions, according to the...

As promised a departure from our recent focus on fashion and luxury in China. I did a Q/A with the always insightful, always entertaining and fantastic writer Benjamin Shobert of the Asia Healthcare Blog yesterday. Here is the article he published. Ben Shobert: You make reference to what you call Chinas policy of health through wealth? Can you explain where that comes from and what it means to companies looking at China as an opportunity for their healthcare business? Michael Zakkour: That phrase came from my extensive and repeated readings of the Chinese governments 12th five-year plan. I tried to formulate in my mind what the commonalities across sectors were as the country pursues growth. What I saw was an admission by China that to sustain growth and continue to move in the right direction they had to admit that the country has some unhealthy things happening. To address this, they see that they need to approach the health of the people, the country and the environmen...

DoNews, 10/17/11 Jack Ma, chairman of Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group, today announced newly revised rules for B2C e-commerce platform Taobao Mall. Merchants who belonged to the platform prior to October 10 and have ranking in the top 90% in terms of customer service (a customer satisfaction score no lower than 4.6 points) can pay fees under the old rules from January 1 to September 30, 2012 on a monthly basis, after which they will pay fees under the new rules. New merchants will pay under the old rules until January 1, when they will begin paying under the new fee structure. Alibaba Group will invest an additional RMB 1 bln in the consumer protection fund and cut merchants' 2012 consumer protection deposits in half. Alibaba Group will also provide RMB 500 mln to guarantee loans to small merchants, and will also invest RMB 300 mln towards marketing and improvements to its technology service platform. The bottom 10% in terms of customer satisfaction, however, wi...