Arawana Rice Bran Oil from China made its debut recently in Japans popular import supermarket "il gusto Dolce Vita", attracting hundreds of shoppers lining up. Arawana announced its entry into the Japanese market with giant advertisements on Shibuyas big screens as well as a grand product launch event, attracting the presence of hundreds of Japanese retailers and media.

As a major consumer of rice bran oil, Japan has built high technological hurdle and a market hard for foreign players since it is dominated by domestic brands mainly. Why can a Chinese brand successfully enter the Japanese market and result in a purchasing boom?

The parent company of Arawana is an international giant of grain and oil, a household name in China which has initiated consumption upgrading towards small package oil and is favored by 1.3 billion Chinese. Arawana started to focus on the R&D of rice bran oil ten years ago. A 300-people team was devoted to conquering several technological bottlenecks in terms of raw material, refining process and nutrition reservation. The R&D team created "enzymatic degumming", a patented technology of low temperature extraction, to naturally reserve oryzanol and phytosterol- two core nutrients of rice bran oil. The average content of oryzanol and phytosterol are both 10,000 mg/kg, which is identified to be a good balance between nutrients reservation and quality. Arawanas technology and quality have already reached internationally advanced level. At the International Conference on Rice Bran Oil (ICRBO 2016, Tokyo), Arawana represented China to compete with several rice bran oil brands from Japan, India, Vietnam and Thailand, and won the "Quality Award". This event sparked public discussion and a shopping wave of Japanese students in China to buy Arawana Rice Bran Oil. Since then, the product started to be known to Japanese consumers.

Taking this as a good start, Arawana will join hands with Japanese retailers in the future to further expand the market. It plans to sell in 10,000 supermarkets in Tokyo and Osaka within two years and let more Japanese consumers could purchase the quality rice bran oil of Arawana. With strong brands such as Arawana coming to the stage, domestic rice bran oil brands, which have been the pride of Japanese people, are facing the challenge to be surpassed. While keeping an eye on this possible trend, we need to think about how to advance with the times, insist on quality and innovation, in order to secure the position in the fierce competition!