About 80 percent of vitamins and health supplements sold at a suburban Sydney pharmacy are sent to people in China through personal shoppers or daigous who buy in bulk.

"We are seeing a lot of Chinese clientele putting a lot of thought into their life, their lifestyle, and how to stay healthy," said Eastwood Pharmacy manager Colleen Wall.

A growing demand in China has helped Asia to become one of the world's biggest nutritional health supplement markets, and Australia has become a major supplier.

"We are not surprised,"said University of Sydney professor Hans Hendrischke. "We have seen that trend from Chinese investment in healthcare and that was, of course, on top of growing exports from Australia into China. The whole range of Chinese interest in Australian healthcare covers supplements, it covers export of medicines, Chinese buying Australian supplement firms as well as actual healthcare and services, so it is a broad-based trend where Australia sits in a very good place with China."

Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, estimates that growing interest in health and sustainability products in Asia and at home could be worth about 25 billion Australian dollars (17 billion U.S. dollars) to Australian producers by 2030.

"I can't see this part stopping because the dynamic that is buying it is just a large part of the population now," said Wall.

(Cover image via VCG)