Products Launched
| Mid-Autumn Festival |
Food KOL Li Ziqi launched the Mid-Autumn Festival Mooncake Gift Box, themed “I love Beijing Tiananmen Square”, meaning a happy Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day.
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Sparking water brand Yuanqi Senlin collaborated with Tianjin famous pastry brand Xianghe Bobo Pu（祥禾饽饽铺）to launch Mooncake Gift box.
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KFC collaborated with the Palace Museum to launch two Mooncake Gift box series themed “Flowers.”
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Nestlé and Guangzhou Restaurant Group Liangfengyuan jointly released a Mid-Autumn Festival Mooncake Gift box containing egg yolk and white lotus paste mooncake, red bean paste mooncake, and Nestlé coffee.
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Snack brand Be & Cheery launched the Mooncake Gift box using Japanese animation IP Doraemon. The Mooncake Gift box contains four flavors: pumpkin, purple potato, mung bean, and soy milk, and uses algae sugar instead of sugar.
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Snack brand Bestore rolled out fresh fruit mooncakes, which uses fresh fruit jam and fruit pieces as the filling. It also adopts the Dunhuang (an ancient town on the old Silk Road) style packaging design.
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Chinese ice cream brand Chicecream launched the Mid-Autumn Festival Snow Skin Mooncake Gift Box. Mooncakes are available in two flavors of raspberry hazelnut milk and mango pistachio milk.
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| Dairy |
Yili's children's milk brand QQ Star launched a series of new products for the school season, including Xueba Milk containing DHA, Friendship Milk, Power Milk containing peptides and taurine, Knowledge Milk containing lutein and lycopene, Energy Milk with high protein, vitamin B complex and cellulose, and Eye Milk containing DHA, omega-3 fatty acids, and anthocyanins.
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| Vitasoy announced the launch of two new plant-based drinks integrating two plant proteins, “Almonds + Macadamia" and “Oats + Quinoa", expanding from single soy milk to complex beverages.
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Yili's yogurt brand Ambrosial cooperated with Chinese famous traditional pastry brand Dao Xiang Cun（稻香村）and time-honored Cantonese catering brand To To Kui（陶陶居）to launch two mooncake-flavored yogurt products, which are five nuts mooncake flavor and egg-yolk lotus seed paste mooncake flavor.
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Chinese soda brand Hankow ErChang launched sugar-free low-fat oat milk tea, which is available in two flavors of Matcha Red Bean and Sakura, with youthful and lovely package designs.
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Yili announced the launch of Beihuan high-protein yogurt, focusing on the nutritional needs of the fitness group. The product contains 10g of high protein, and fat-reducing CECT8145 patented probiotics, featuring sugar-free and low calorie. It meets multiple needs of fitness people for protein supplement, muscle building, and fat control.
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Yogurt brand Classy Kiss launched a new product containing seven kinds of lactobacillus, which can help maintain the intestinal micro ecological balance.
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| Milk powder |
FrieslandCampina launched Friso Presitge organic formula through JD cross-border e-commerce channel.
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Synutra rolled out three children’s milk powder products, which are Shanjia（膳佳）, focusing on providing balanced nutrition for children who are picky about food, Anhu（安护）, aiming at improving immunity, and Xingtong（星瞳）, fortifying nutrients that protect eyesight.
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Biostime launched Sujia（素加）and Beisu Beijia（贝素贝加）infant formula products. The Sujia（素加） adds lutein and nucleotide, and Beisu Beijia（贝素贝加）adds nucleotide and GOS. Biostime said these two series could supplement product categories for lower-tier cities.
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Ausnutria announced the organic infant milk powder brand Neolac’s upgrade to the "super high-end organic" brand. It renewed the formula to the Infinite-Bionergy formula, with organic ingredients up to 98%. It also released the new packaging of the Miffy China version and launched organic formula milk powder for mothers.
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| Meal replacement |
Quaker collaborated with time-honored traditional Chinese medicine brand Pangaoshou to roll out Hericium Oatmeal and Ejiao Oatmeal, catering to young people’s health needs. The Hericium Oatmeal adds hericium, oats, amomum, coix seed, etc., targeting people staying up late. The Ejiao Oatmeal adds Ejiao, oatmeal, jujube kernels, red dates, etc., targeting female consumers.
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Mars' energy-supplement chocolate brand Snickers launched crisp cereal wafers. Compared with traditional Snickers, the new product has lower calories count and adds healthy grain ingredients such as purple sweet potato and black rice.
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Meal replacement brand ffit8 released "Beef Flavor Protein Bar", a collaboration flavor with iQiyi's variety show "The Rap of China". The ffit8 protein bar has already been available in soy milk flavor, walnut rose flavor, and banana flavor.
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Cereal brand OCAK launched bubble oatmeal in two flavors, bubble white peach flavor and bubble sweet orange flavor. This product adopts a low-temperature baking method and contains freeze-dried yogurt and fruit cubes.
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Weight management brand Miss Zero launched a new calorie control Chinese-style fast-food series. The product uses konjac, oats and other low-carb and high-fiber raw materials to replace rice flour and erythritol instead of sucrose to control fat. Portfolios include Spicy Diced Chicken Rice, Soy Beans Braised Pork Rice, etc.
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Cereal brand Wholly Moly! rolled out Super Blend soybean porridge. The new product uses oat bran, soybean, rose, and goji berry as ingredients and contains no sucrose.
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Want Want launched Fix Body nut bars in three flavors of sea salt, mixed berry, and cocoa black chocolate.
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Data Browse
1. Australian health product company Blackmores reported that the company would not pay a final dividend due to a 66% drop in 2019-2020 net profit to AUD 18.1 million (about RMB 95.5 million). The main reason is the halt of China's "Daigou" business. Meanwhile, due to the closure of Australia’s borders, its retail business was also hit hard due to the lack of tourists entering the country.
2. Nongfu Spring released its mid-term report for 2020, showing that in the first half of 2020, it realized revenue of RMB 11.54 billion, down 6.21% year-on-year. The company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 8, with a total market value exceeding 440 billion Hong Kong dollars.
3. The State Administration for Market Regulation issued administrative penalties of RMB 61 million to Luckin Coffee and 43 third-party firms for financial fraud and other unfair competition.
4. Fonterra announced its results for the 2020 fiscal year (from August 1, 2019, to July 31, 2020), with NZD 21 billion (about RMB 103.7 billion), an increase of 1.1 billion New Zealand dollars. The main reasons for this business performance were strong normalized gross profit in the Ingredients business and despite disruption from COVID-19, the strong sales and gross margins from the Greater China Foodservice business in the first half of the year.
5. Third-party agency China Skinny’s dairy tracking report shows that overseas brands accounted for 23% of dairy sales on the Tmall platform from January to August this year, compared with 52% in 2016 and 35% in 2019, showing a steady decline.
Company Dynamics
1. Coca-Cola appointed a new president in Greater China. Vamsi Mohan Thati, the current president of Coca-Cola's South Pacific business unit, will serve as the president of Coca-Cola's Greater China Operations Division.
2. On September 6, Firmus announced to take over the YuanShengTai Dairy Farm Limited for HKD 3.07 billion. YST Dairy is one of China's largest fresh milk suppliers. The acquisition showed Firmus’ intention to control the upstream milk source and secure stable fresh milk supplies.
3. On September 8, American plant-based meat company Beyond Meat announced they would develop production facilities in Jiaxing of Zhejiang Province to produce "Beyond Meat" brand plant-based meat products in China. The facilities will achieve full production in early 2021.
4. On September 10, Nestlé announced its latest round of investment in China. It will invest RMB 400 million in Harbin Shuangcheng (200 million RMB which will be put in place this year) to strengthen Nestlé's high-end capability in local factories. So far, Nestlé has invested in Shuangcheng for three consecutive years, with a total amount of RMB 700 million.
5. On September 10, catering giant Yum China was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company plans to use the raised money for restaurant expansion, food innovation, digitalization, and supply chain investment. As of June 30, 2020, Yum owned more than 9,900 restaurants in China, and its most famous brands in China included KFC and Pizza Hut.
6. On September 15, Kraft Heinz announced its new development plans, which included the sale of part of its cheese businesses to Lactalis for USD 3.2 billion (approximately RMB 22 billion). Additionally, it planned to develop the local soy sauce brand Master to be the second-largest Chinese sauce brand and develop Heinz into the No.1 Western sauce brand in China.
7. Danone revealed on September 15 that it is building a modern FSMP (Food for Special Medical Purpose) factory in Wuxi of Jiangsu Province, one of the three global bases of Danone Medical Nutrition. The factory plans to start production next year and produce FSMP catering to Chinese consumers’ taste preferences.
8. On September 16, COFCO Coca-Cola (one of the bottling partners of Coca-Cola in mainland China) and COSTA reached strategic cooperation on the coffee vending machine business. COFCO Coca-Cola will help expand COSTA coffee vending machines in multiple retail terminals such as offices and hotels.
9. Fresh Hema will open its first X membership store in Shanghai on October 1. The store covers an area of 18,000 square meters and adopts a warehouse-shelf design. It is the third warehouse-style membership store brand (after Sam’s Club and Costco) and the first domestic-funded warehouse membership store brand in China.
10. On September 27, Yili announced to acquire the shares of ZhongDi Dairy through the newly established holding subsidiary wholesome Harvest Limited. The price of this comprehensive offer is HKD 1.132 per share, and the total consideration is HKD 1.6597 billion. After the transaction, Yili would become the largest shareholder of ZhongDi Dairy.
Regulatory Updates
1. On September 3, China consulted on the expanded use scope of Sodium Hyaluronate, which got approval as a new food ingredient for health food production in 2008.
2. On September 4, Tmall Global unveiled its quality management standards for CBEC products. The standards cover 9 categories and over 50 subcategories that included products like mom and baby products, health food, ordinary food, pet food, clothing, digital products, etc. Later on September 10, Tmall Global announced a new standard specifying the prohibited and restricted ingredients used in imported CBEC foods and cosmetics. The standard took effect on September 17, 2020.
3. On September 11, China GAC released Notification No.103 specifying emergency prevention measures on overseas manufacturers whose imported frozen foods were tested positive for Covid-19. The notification came into effect immediately on the date of its publication.
4. On September 16, China GAC released the list of non-compliant food products in Aug 2020. 206 batches of imported food from 39 countries/regions were rejected in August.
6. On September 14, Chinese and European leaders announced the official signing of an agreement on geographical indications (GI). The bilateral pact aims at protecting each side's 275 varieties of specialties, including wine, tea, agricultural products, and food.
7. On September 20, China Customs introduced to consumers through WeChat official account the definitions of hydrolyzed milk protein infant formula and special medical purpose infant formula and gave guidance on purchasing hydrolyzed milk protein infant formula.
***Disclaimer: All images used in this article are from the internet.
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