Processed Asian Foods in Australia – An update

5.6 Group 4: Asian tourist consumers
Foreign tourists from Asia also provide a source of demand for processed Asian foods. While they
would obviously consume Australian foods during their visits, at some stage most of these visitors also
consume Asian foods. For consistency with the 2006 Census, inbound tourism from Asian countries for
June 2006 shows that on any one night there were almost 160,000 visitors from Asia. As per Instate, a
moderate propensity to consume processed Asian foods has been allocated to these visitor numbers
(Table 5.2).
Table 5.2 Group 4 Asian food consumers
No. of
Country of Visitors Av no. nights Total nights visitors
residence ('000's) in Australia ('000's) any 1 night
Japan 624.4 17 10,615 29,082
Hong Kong 142.3 29 4,127 11,306
Singapore 218.3 23 5,021 13,756
Malaysia 136 37 5,032 13,786
Indonesia 73.8 40 2,952 8,088
Taiwan 93.3 25 2,333 6,390
Thailand 68.8 41 2,821 7,728
Korea 221.3 40 8,852 24,252
PR China 279.2 44 12,285 33,657
Other Asia 80 49 3,920 10,740
Totals 1,937 345 57,957 158,785
(Source: Tourism Research Australia, June 2006)
5.7 Estimates of purchase values
Instate estimated the average purchase of processed Asian foods for high propensity Group 1 consumers
was $14 per week in 2006. Since this period, the CPI Index for food has increased by a factor of 1.66
(as at September 2008). This converts to a CPI adjusted figure of $23 per week for the average value of
purchases of processed Asian foods.
A survey of Asian grocery stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane confirms that the average value
of weekly purchases of processed Asian foods is in the range of $20 to $28. Accordingly, the CPI
adjusted figure of $23 is consistent with the surveys and is considered to be a conservative estimated
value for average weekly purchases of processed Asian foods.
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