Tea time? 搭配英国消化饼干

所属教程:金融时报原文阅读

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2020年07月04日

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Tea time? 搭配英国消化饼干

还记得去年爆红的饼干包装里钻出小猫小狗的超萌创意广告吗？受益于出口激励政策，这款不起眼的英国消化饼干已经成为世界最畅销的饼干之一，并登陆天猫抢滩中国市场。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

savoury 可口的

swallow up 吞噬，收购

confectionery 甜食

cosmopolitan 世界性的

quintessentially 典型的

warrant 认股权证

trade deficit 贸易逆差

阅读即将开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用时间，并对照我们在文章最后给出的参考值来估算您的阅读速度。

All the tea in China needs is a humble British digestive biscuit （516words）

By Scheherazade Daneshkhu, Consumer Industries Editor

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The humble British digestive has become one of the world’s best-travelled biscuits after an export drive and now evens boasts an online store on Alibaba, China’s biggest ecommerce site.

United Biscuits, which owns the McVitie’s brand, will on Thursday report a 50 per cent increase in exports over the past three years and forecast another 50 per cent jump by 2020.

George Osborne, chancellor, said it was “fantastic to see a great British company like United Biscuits making this commitment to boost exports”.

McVitie’s makes several well-known British brands including Jaffa cakes, Penguin biscuits and Jacob’s savoury crackers, but said the plain digestive was its star export, accounting for two-thirds of its £250m in overseas sales.

United Biscuits, which was swallowed up last year by Turkey’s Yildiz Holding confectionery group, said it had launched an ecommerce site with Alibaba last week because online was an essential way of reaching 386m potential customers in China.

China is the world’s fourth-biggest biscuit market by sales even though the Chinese eat only half the number of biscuits of the world average.

Amee Chande, Alibaba’s UK managing director, said Chinese tastes were becoming more cosmopolitan. “Increasingly, we see Chinese consumers searching for unique food items that represent a culture or lifestyle that they cannot find in China.” Digestives were: “a wonderfully British product that has the heritage and quality that the Chinese consumer is looking for”.

Other quintessentially British brands to have made their way to China include Weetabix, the breakfast group bought by Shanghai’s Bright Food.

Like Weetabix, McVitie’s has a royal warrant, giving it additional cachet. “Having the Union Jack on the pack is very important to Chinese consumers, as it signifies that the biscuits were imported and made in the UK,” said Jeff van der Eems, chief executive of United Biscuits.

United Biscuits has reduced its reliance on the UK market from 75 per cent of total sales seven years ago, to 60 per cent today. Its export markets include the Middle East, Africa, India and China.

Mr van der Eems said one challenge was making products affordable to overseas consumers. He said the company had a rule that no pack of biscuits should cost more than the income generated by 10 minutes of work.

In Nigeria, the cost of a standard 400g pack of McVitie's digestives, containing 27 biscuits, would take three days of work. In order to hit its 10 minute rule, the group produces packs of 5 small digestives.

United Biscuits is one of a number of a number of companies encouraged to increase overseas sales by the government, which this month launched a new drive to boost British food exports.

The initiative will gather steam next year with the creation of a Great British Food Unit to co-ordinate the dispatch of trade missions around the world, promoting British food.

Elizabeth Truss, minister for food and the environment, said this month: “What we want to do is to challenge people’s perceptions about British food,” saying that the cuisine’s “Dark Ages” were over.

The UK has a trade deficit of £20.8bn in food and drink.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1. How long did United Biscuits take to reach the target of 50% growth by 2015?

a. 15years

b. 5years

c. 3years

d. 6years

2. Which one is not belonged to McVitie’s?

a. Oreo

b. Jaffa cakes

c. Penguin biscuits y

d. Jacob’s savoury crackers