Germany and New Zealand drive China’s white wine market growth in 2025
China's white wine market has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, with market penetration surging from 5% to 20%.
Combine New Zealand lamb with 40 keen foodies, a celebrity chef, barbecue equipment, spectacular alpine scenery... and a forecast for snow. What have you got? Winter Grillcamp – a Beef + Lamb New Zealand promotion in Germany.
The event launched the farmer organisation's new season public relations programme in Northern Europe. It targeted two key market groups: upwardly mobile young men and women with a keen interest in cooking healthy but delicious food.
"Hosting a barbecue in zero temperatures at the top of Germany's highest mountain may seem extreme, but we wanted to do something out of the ordinary," says Nick Beeby, Beef + Lamb New Zealand market manager, emerging markets.
"The event was run alongside a competition, so we had to have that pull."
It worked. The competition attracted 8000 entries from the readers of glossy magazines GQ and Eat Smarter, keen to learn about the secrets to cooking a perfect barbecue from chef Heiko Schulz.
GQ describes itself as the sophisticated choice for its 430,000 readers, "exploring the male universe with intellectual opinion, attitude and style". Eat Smarter aims to make healthy lifestyles a pleasure, with recipes disproving the prejudice that food that's good for you can't taste good too.
The competition winners were invited to the special mountaintop barbecue, as well as a number of popular food writers. Their experience is already generating positive coverage in the press and across the blogosphere.
Chef Schulz cooked five dishes in his signature 'rebel' style, all featuring New Zealand lamb:
• Lamb fillet smoked on Jack Daniels chips
• Lamb sirloin filled with scallops and vegetables and cooked in a foil bag
• Lamb shashlik (Turkish-style skewers)
• Lamb racks with New York-style hot spice
• Lamb leg, cooked sous-vide and smoked
The promotion was timed to garner maximum media attention in the crucial run-up to Easter, Beeby says.
"Easter is a key consumption time for lamb so we want to make sure that when people are buying, it's New Zealand lamb they're looking to put in their shopping baskets."
With the current situation in the European farm machinery market being described as difficult at best, it’s perhaps no surprise that the upcoming AgriSIMA 2026 agricultural machinery exhibition, scheduled for February 2026 at Paris-Nord Villepinte, has been cancelled.
The Meat Industry Association of New Zealand (MIA) has launched the first in-market activation of the refreshed Taste Pure Nature country-of-origin brand with an exclusive pop-up restaurant experience in Shanghai.
Jayna Wadsworth, daughter of the late New Zealand wicketkeeper Ken Wadsworth, has launched an auction of cricket memorabilia to raise funds for I Am Hope's youth mental health work.
As we move into the 2025/26 growing season, the Tractor and Machinery Association (TAMA) reports that the third quarter results for the year to date is showing that the stagnated tractor market of the last 18 months is showing signs of recovery.
DairyNZ chair Tracy Brown is urging dairy farmers to participate in the 2026 Levy vote, to be held early next year.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) is calling for nominations for director roles in the Eastern North Island and Southern South Island electoral districts.

OPINION: Every time politicians come up with an investment scheme where they're going to have a crack at 'picking winners'…
OPINION: What are the unions for these days?