British Essentials Accelerates Expansion through Hong Kong

British Essentials offers a convenient grocery shopping experience with home delivery of only British products

British Essentials is one of the first online supermarkets selling food and home products directly imported from the UK. It is also the official Hong Kong online retailer of Morrisons private label groceries. Morrisons is one of the largest supermarket chains in Britain. Currently, the site hosts around 850 products and delivers directly to home with their in-house logistic team.

The company specialises in British products and Hong Kong is its first overseas market. Faraz Amir, Director of Asia Pacific, sees a big potential for supermarket eCommerce here. “There are mainstream supermarkets with products from all over the world, but we specialise in only British products, offering high quality of food products meeting European regulations and standard,” he said.

“With a high density of an expatriate population in Hong Kong, we expect the city to be an attractive market for us to supply food products from their home country. We are not only targeting British expatriates, but also those from the rest of Europe, as well as consumers who has lived in the UK or appreciate its food and culture,” he added.

Setting up their first overseas operation in Hong Kong, the company has planned to use the city as a test bed for Asia, “if we get this model right in Hong Kong, we can apply to other regions such as Middle East and across Asia Pacific ,” Amir said.

While it is focussing on packaged food and toiletries, the company plans to add fresh food, baby products, and frozen dairy products to the list. Other than their exclusive partnership with Morrisons, Amir revealed that more British brands will be available through their platform in the coming months.

British Essentials currently has a core team of staff in its Hong Kong office, handling logistics and quality control. Its plan is to expand its delivery fleet and to add four to six more delivery vans so as to optimise its logistic capability.

“Hong Kong is an easy place to start a business and I would absolutely recommend to the companies that have an outstanding product or service,” he said, “it is a competitive place, but for career or business growth, it is definitely the place to be.”

Having been living in Hong Kong for over 10 years, Amir enjoys the high accessibility of the city. “Hong Kong is right in the middle where we can easily connect to a lot of Asian countries, so travelling has been very easy.”

Amir was introduced to InvestHK during one of the trade shows held in Hong Kong. He recalled, “InvestHK has given us the network with other entrepreneurs through social activities organised by the team. That really helps a lot for the exposure. The fact that InvestHK is a government department adds to their reliability.”