Visitors to China could be forgiven for thinking that healthy living was fairly low down the list of priorities for its 700m urban citizens. Gridlocked traffic, overcrowded transportation, chronic air pollution and vast seas of steel and concrete are the abiding first impressions of many Chinese cities, with barely a tree or patch of green — let alone a jogger or health-food store — in sight.
Yet it is precisely because of the unhealthy environment in which many of them live that Chinese consumers are becoming increasingly health-conscious, a trend that has spawned significant growth across a range of sectors.
China’s burgeoning vitamin and supplements industry is one such. Although traditional herbal remedies and supplements have been taken for centuries, demand for western-style vitamins and supplements, until recently, was limited. However, the market has been transformed in recent years, with a growing number of domestic and multinational vitamin and supplement makers now vying for a share of a market that Euromonitor estimated was worth Rmb101.7bn ($16.4bn) at the end of last year, almost double its value in 2008.