All that stuff has got to be shifted around the globe, and that's where companies like New Zealand's Mainfreight come in.
The NZX-listed, South Auckland-based freight and logistics firm, which has operations across Australasia, Asia, Europe and North and South America, began building a presence in China over a decade ago, before the country became the so-called "economic miracle" it is today.
In the late 1990s the company bought a stake in the Chinese agency it was using to engage trade between China and New Zealand, says group managing director Don Braid.
He says the company kept building its shareholding in the agency until it became wholly-owned by Mainfreight in 2008.
That allowed the firm to gradually learn the ropes of doing business in a complex overseas market.
"We've learned ways of doing business in China that we didn't know before and when we bought that business we retained the shareholders and they worked for us," Braid says. "That's been invaluable. We've been able to grow our business with friends and previous shareholders within it."
Mainfreight's Asian division increased revenue by 40 per cent to $26 million in the 2011 financial year and the company currently operates eight branches across mainland China and Hong Kong in cities including Qingdao, Tianjin, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
CaroTrans, a wholly-owned Mainfreight subsidiary that provides container shipping services, also has offices in all of those Chinese cities.
Mainfreight operates in China as a freight forwarder, using third party transport operators to move goods around, although Mainfreight-branded vans can be found in the bigger cities, Braid says.
He says the company may operate its own trucks in China one day, although they'll be there to assist the international business - not to move domestic goods around the country.
Mainfreight has established a solid footprint along China's eastern seaboard, the country's traditional industrial heartland.
But Braid says the firm's future expansion will focus on central areas of China, following manufacturers as they move inland to avoid the wage cost and land price inflation that has affected coastal areas in recent years.
The company will soon open offices in Beijing and Chengdu, capital of the southwestern Sichuan province, he says.
Chengdu, more than 1500km inland from Shanghai, is rapidly expanding as an industrial centre.
New Zealand oscillating crystal manufacturer Rakon opened a new factory in the city last year, while Taiwanese-owned contract manufacturing giant Foxconn, best-known for the products it produces for Apple, opened a 2.8sq km plant that was reportedly going to be staffed by 150,000 workers by the end of 2011.
"As industry starts to find a foothold in some of those central locations then we're doing the same," Braid says.
It's difficult to project how many branches the company might have in China in 10 years' time.
"We'll have as many as we need to satisfy our customer requirements. I guess there will be more, a lot more - in 10 years."
Braid says Mainfreight predominantly deals with exports in China, but as the number of middle class Chinese consumers grows, imports will become a more important part of its business in that country.
The company already ships perishable goods, including seafood such as crayfish, to China from New Zealand, he adds.
Braid says that when the company first entered China the trade lane between that country and Australia was the biggest route in its international business. These days, that title has been claimed by its China to the US trade lane, he says.
And Braid says Mainfreight has a new opportunity - through its recently acquired European business, the Netherlands-based Wim Bosman Group - to grow its China to Europe trade lane, which has the potential to become as big as the route running between China and the US. "The European market is just as big as the US market - those two trade lanes are the biggest in the world," says Braid.
Meanwhile, Mainfreight is eyeing India as a potential new market.
Braid says the company could take advantage of the large amount of sea freight that passes between China and India.
"It's what we call a short trade lane," he says. "The issue for us [in India] is that we've got to find a suitable agent and/or partner and that's proving difficult at this point in time."
Opportunity knocks
Michael Lotharo believes rapidly rising imports into China will be prove to be a very big market opportunity for Mainfreight.
Lotharo - who is Mainfreight's Greater China boss - says business growth will piggyback off the changing dynamic of the Chinese economy "where they are trying to build a consumption model away from the traditional export economy.
"The Chinese consumer is now the second largest consumer in the world," he says. "So they like to see foreign products. They enjoy buying foreign foods, foreign wines, foreign cheeses, foreign clothing, foreign footwear, electrical goods, household appliances you name it."
"It's like everything else. It's just a lot of good old-fashioned shoe leather and getting out there and finding the importers and offering them our services and gaining their support."
Lotharo says inbound freight currently represents about 25 per cent of Mainfreight's China business. But he emphasises that China is still the world's "manufacturing backyard and will probably be so for another good 10 or 15 years".
Mainfreight is building up its expertise within China to handle customs clearance in both perishable and non-perishable products. Lotharo says the FTA opened up avenues for many New Zealand food exporters to go direct to China but they faced hurdles dealing with sophistical but complicated importing rules, "that's why we are slowly building the intellectual property in that process so we are able to assist."
