2020 Guangdong & Macao Branded Products Fair injects vitality into the economy

The three-day 2020 Guangdong & Macao Branded Products Fair (2020GMBPF), jointly organised by the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) and the Department of Commerce of Guangdong, took place at The Venetian Macao from 11 to 13 December.

Despite the pandemic, the fair attracted nearly 340 exhibitors to set up almost 400 booths at the event.

The 2020GMBPF continued the annual event’s effort at integrating various elements including trade, cultural exchanges, shopping experiences, recreational activities and entertainment. The three-day event served as a platform for business exchanges and co-operation between exhibitors and professional visitors, as well as a leisure-activity destination and gathering of general interest to residents and tourists.

The 2020GMBPF exhibition floor was extensive, spanning 9,000 square metres. The fair featured an array of themed sections, including the “Macao Featured Products Area”, “Guangdong Province Branded Products Exhibition & Sales Area”, “Belt and Road Exhibition Area”, “The Power of Youth-Young Entrepreneurs Exhibition Zone”, and the “Guangdong State-owned Enterprise Exhibition Zone”.

This year’s Fair offered a “Guangdong-Macao Cuisine Channel Exhibition Area” where visitors could have a taste of Portuguese, Cantonese, Thai and Indonesian cuisines. Influencers have been invited to live-stream and live broadcast their visits to exhibition booths, during which they selected for viewers those must-buy, must-eat, must-play and must-see branded products and wonderful programmes, and promote for traders their products globally through the platform of the 2020GMBPF.

Mr Chen Song Hu is the Sales Director of Guangdong Yantang Dairy Co., Ltd., an exhibitor at the newly added “Guangdong State-owned Enterprise Exhibition Zone”. He said that as a company with more than a 60-year history, Guangdong Yantang was the province’s first listed liquid-dairy product company, and one of the top-20 companies in the country. Aside from traditional products, the company had also launched a range of products for individual markets and started exporting products to Macao in 2019. In 2020, Mr Chen’s company participated in GMBPF for the first time. The company attended the exhibition in order to display products to local enterprises at a well-established trade show. During the event, Guangdong Yantang also received inquiries from interested parties.

During the exhibition, the company was successful in securing an expression of intention to co-operate from a food delivery platform based in Macao. Such a link was expected to increase Guangdong Yantang’s annual revenue from MOP200,000 to MOP300,000.

Mr Chen said he hoped that the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area would help to expand further his firm’s market, while overseas promotion would be the next step under consideration.

Ms Susanni Aryanto is the Secretary General of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce in Macau (Inacham-Macau), an exhibitor at “The Belt and Road Exhibition Zone”. She said this year’s event was the fifth time that her association took part in GMBPF. Due to the pandemic, Indonesian enterprises were unable to come to the city to participate in the event, therefore their products were brought to the exhibition with Inacham-Macau’s assistance. Such effort allowed residents of Macao and Mainland China to taste and purchase authentic products from Indonesia.

Indonesian products exhibited at the latest edition of the trade show consisted mainly of drinks and food, while clothing and furniture had been among items featured in previous editions. Even though many parts of the world are still under the shadow of the pandemic, many Indonesian enterprises have confidence in Macao’s epidemic-prevention measures, and consider the exhibition capable of attracting a great number of visitors from Macao and Mainland China. As a result, such firms continued to take part in GMBPF with support from Inacham-Macau.

Ms Aryanto said the exhibitors had received good feedback after years of taking part in GMBPF. As local residents and Mainland Chinese visitors are getting more familiar with Indonesian food and drinks, especially coffee and snacks, Indonesian enterprises wish to find Mainland China-based agents by using the convention and exhibition platform of Macao to take their products to the Mainland Chinese market, she added.

The latest edition of GMBPF featured a wall decorated with giant fresh fruits and a display featuring the “Guangdong and Macao Super Monopoly” were set up at the venue for people to take photographs, and “check in” at the event. A diverse array of singing and dance performances, magic shows, interactive games and promotional sessions was held at the Grand Stage of the event. The three-day trade show drew a large audience and was infused with a bustling and jubilant atmosphere.

The “Forum on Technological Innovation Co-operation and Coordinated Industrial Development in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area” was hosted in the morning of the first day of the event. Mr Benson Lau Wai Meng, President of IPIM, said at the forum that a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation was picking up pace globally, accelerating the inflow of resources to the Greater Bay Area and other regions. Such resources would also be complementary to the co-operation efforts and development of other industries, he added.

Moreover, he noted, Macao could use its advantages in the fields of innovation and science and technology, as well as the fact of being a service economy and being open to the outside world, in order to contribute to advancing the “International Science and Technology Innovation Centre of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area” and the “Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Science and Technology Innovation Corridor”, thus contributing to innovation-driven national development and the “dual circulation” economic strategy.

In the same morning, a delegation of more than 50 business representatives from the catering industry, the food trade, and e-commerce platforms from Guangdong Province and Macao, took part in the 2020GMBPF Guided Tour. The event organisers also arranged for exhibitors and professional visitors to visit the Central and Southern District of the Macao peninsula.