"In China, people generally prefer to eat apples, not drink apple juice," an executive at a major Chinese AJC exporter told Cropli at the Anuga food trade fair in October.

That, in a sentence, is the problem China's apple juice concentrate industry was built to avoid. For decades, the country's processors turned cheap apples into concentrate and shipped it abroad — to America, to Europe, to anywhere people drank juice. The domestic market barely figured.

Now the export model is breaking down, and companies are being forced to sell at home.

SDIC Zhonglu Fruit Juice, a state-owned processor and one of China's largest, saw domestic revenue hit 385mn yuan ($54mn) through September 2025, up 80 per cent from 214mn yuan a year earlier, according to company filings. Home sales now account for 27 per cent of total revenue, up from just 16 per cent in 2024 — the highest share in over a decade.

The pivot was not entirely voluntary. US orders "stalled" after President Donald Trump imposed 55 per cent tariffs earlier this year, later reduced to 45 per cent, the executive said. America has historically been China's largest export market for AJC.

China's exports peaked in 2007 at 1.03mn tonnes but crashed to 268,000 tonnes in 2023 amid declining acreage and a poor 2022 harvest. Last year's rebound to 535,000 tonnes came as production recovered, though volumes remain roughly half the peak.

[chart slug="china-ajc-exports-world"]

At Zhonglu, the trajectory is clear. Exports rose 34 per cent in 2024 while domestic sales jumped 43 per cent. Through September 2025, the gap widened: domestic maintained 80 per cent growth as export growth slowed to 13 per cent.

Selling at home means supplying China's finished beverage brands rather than shipping bulk concentrate to foreign buyers. Huiyuan holds the largest share of the pure juice segment, while Nongfu Spring commands the fast-growing not-from-concentrate category, according to industry data compiled by Daxue Consulting and Citrus Australia.

Zhonglu operates processing plants across Shandong, Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces and expanded into Europe in 2018 with the acquisition of Poland's Appol Group.

But the structural question hangs over the entire industry. Zhonglu produced 117,700 tonnes of concentrate in 2024. At year-end, 90,000 tonnes of it was still in storage.