MARKET OVERVIEW

In recent years, swiftlet’s farming has achieved leaps and bounds growth. Currently, Malaysia’s has an impressive record of producing 375 Metric Tonnes (MT) of bird’s nest, with a value worth RM 1.5 billion per year and it’s the second largest producer in the world.

The primary market is the Chinese community around the world, mainly China, Taiwan, Singapore and North America. With the high growth of China market and new potential emerging markets such as Middle East, Japan and Korea, there is a constant unmatched demand for the supply of edible bird’s nest. The mismatch is further amplified during Chinese festivals, such as Chinese New Year, when gifts of bird’s nest are synonymous with wealth and good fortune.

The demand of bird’s nest in China has been very encouraging. With the rapid growth of standard of living in China, the awareness and acceptance for natural, organic and nutritional food such as edible bird’s nest. Moreover, a dual nature of edible bird’s nest that could be treated as medicine and/or food may play a role.

At present, China demand on bird’s nest itself has exceeded the current world supply (World Production 2,600MT). China has over 1.3 billion populations. With an assumption of only 3% of the people consume 100g of bird nest per year, the consumption sum amount will be 3,900MT of bird’s nest per year.

The calculation has not included other country like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, Malaysia and others. Chinese tends to says, whenever there is Chinese, there is bird’s nest. This term has been tag along with the Chinese community since long history ago. We have more rooms to growth in this industry for many decades.