Organic market size

Table 1 presents some illustrative data from ITC on estimates of overall organic market size and for organic fruit and vegetables. 

China s pharmaceutical market is growing at a very fast pace. The current data show that the total market is around US 20 billion, and it is the ninth largest pharmaceutical country in the world. The Chinese government maintains price control on imported drugs. With China s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), tariffs have been reduced from 20% to 6.5%. The projection is that the market size will reach US 60 billion by 2010, and China will be the world s largest market by 2020. 

The wholesale channel is not economically appreciated because of low profitability, long-term payments and, consequently, low cash flow. Wholesale is also considered inadequate because its logistics do not meet supply features for organic products high volumes required by wholesalers need a supply concentration which is now infeasible (due to the small size of the organic market). 

A researcher on organic synthesis at our Basic Research Laboratories prepared a new vinyl compound, which was later found to promote carbonization of polyacrylonitrile fiber when copolymerized with acrylonitrile. I dare say, without this invention from basic research, we would not have started the development of carbon fiber. I was asked to lead this project. In 1970, we set up a pilot plant in which we invested 1.5 Billion Yen, although the demand for carbon fiber was very limited not only in Japan but in any other countries. The market size was only 1 or 2 tons/month. On the other hand, the pilot plant had a production capacity of 5 tons/month. We took the risk because we were confident in the potential of carbon fiber. In other words, we believed that steel and light metals should be replaced by carbon fiber in the future. 

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