Singapore and premium Asia, a short leg and a hard audience.

Singapore is the sensible first door. It imports the overwhelming majority of its food, it has a dense professional importer and distributor layer, business is conducted in English, and it functions as a testing ground for the wider region: a line that works in a Singapore premium grocer or restaurant group is a much easier conversation in Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur afterwards. Volumes per order are modest, which suits a small Australian producer, and reorder cycles are quick.

Hong Kong is similar in structure with a stronger gifting culture and a heavier hospitality weighting. Japan is the most demanding and the most rewarding. Japanese buyers scrutinise specification, consistency and packaging to a level most Australian producers have not encountered, and they expect the answer to be the same every time they ask. A producer who can meet that standard tends to keep the account for years. A producer who cannot will not get past the first sample round, and it is better to know that early.

Across the region, Australian provenance reads as clean, safe and natural, and that association is doing real work before a producer says anything. Honey with a named floral source, distinctive native ingredients for chefs and manufacturers, and well presented pantry lines all fit. What does not fit is a generic product competing on price, because there is always something closer and cheaper.

• Importer held licences. In Singapore the importer must be licensed with the food agency, and imports are declared per consignment. The licence sits with the importer, not with the Australian producer, which is one more reason the importer usually prefers to buy ex works and control the freight and the clearance.
• Labelling. English is accepted in Singapore and Hong Kong. Japan requires Japanese labelling, which the importer normally applies in market from the producer's data. Everywhere the same content is needed: product name, ingredients in descending order, allergens, net content in metric, country of origin, best before or use by, storage conditions, and the local importer's name and address.
• Health and nutrition claims. Tightly controlled, and the rules differ market by market. A claim that is permitted in Australia may need substantiation or may be prohibited outright. Bioactivity and health claims on honey are a common place for a producer to get this wrong, and the safe approach is to let the importer confirm what may be printed.
• Novel and unfamiliar ingredients. Native Australian species with little history of use in the destination can attract a novel food assessment, particularly in Japan. This has to be checked per species before an order is accepted.
• Cold chain and freight choice. Sea freight from the east coast to Singapore is roughly a couple of weeks, which makes ambient sea freight viable for shelf stable product and makes airfreight genuinely affordable for a first sample order or a high value line. Japan is longer but still comfortable. This is the freight advantage the Gulf does not have.
• Barcodes, images and data. Retail buyers in these markets expect a clean product data pack: GS1 barcode, high resolution image, specification sheet, and carton and pallet dimensions. Sending it unprompted marks a producer as easy to deal with.

Treat Singapore as the entry and the rest as the follow on. Prepare a proper product data pack before the first conversation, because you will be asked for all of it and the producer who has it ready looks like the safer choice. Be precise about specification and be honest about batch variation, especially with a Japanese buyer, who will notice. Quote ex works, hold the price for a stated period, and be willing to fill a genuinely small first order. Then answer quickly. Speed of reply is a competitive advantage that costs nothing.

Our part is unchanged from every other page on this site: a disclosed introduction, help keeping the sample and specification stage moving, and a commission taken out of the producer's own price only after an order ships and the producer has been paid. We do not take title, we do not hold stock and we never add a margin.

None of the above is a description of shipments we have made, because we have made none. That is set out in full on what we have and have not done yet. The other market group is the UAE and the wider Gulf, and both sit under our target export markets.