Dairy companies competing for tens of billions of "cheese cake" Miaoke Lando said that they would not take the initiative to fight a price war

Reporter Xu Jie, trainee reporter Wang Jun, intern reporter Liang Aonan

Recently, at the 2021 China Cheese Development Summit Forum, cheese manufacturers from China gathered together to recommend new cheese products to consumers, while also discussing the opportunities and challenges currently facing the cheese market.

"The national cheese market was less than 500 million yuan in sales fifteen years ago, and reached 8.8 billion yuan last year." Gao Hongbin, former vice minister of agriculture and honorary president of the China Dairy Association, said at the meeting. As more and more companies join, the cheese market, known as the "milk gold", has ushered in an unprecedented heat, and at the same time, the competition in this track has become more intense.

Dairy companies accelerate their entry into the cheese track

According to Euromonitor consulting data, the market size of China's cheese industry reached 8.843 billion yuan in 2020, an increase of 22.72% over 2019, and a compound annual growth rate of more than 20% from 2006 to 2020.

According to the statistics of Zhang Shuyi, a researcher at the National Animal Husbandry Station, there are about 40 enterprises in China that have cheese production licenses, including Miaoke Lando, Sanyuan, Guangming, Mengniu, Yili, Junjun, Meiling, Anda and so on.

At this cheese conference, Yili, Mengniu, Sanyuan Food, Bright Dairy and other dairy companies brought new products to promote. Among them, Yili brought 4 innovative cheeses to the show; Mengniu Group and the European century-old enterprise ARLA jointly launched the Ai's Morning Dawn Cheese brand; Huang's Dairy has been making cheese in some Western restaurants since 2004; the Buffalo Research Institute of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has brought buffalo Masu, hard cheese and fresh cheese; Sanhe beef cheese under Hulunbuir Nongken Group, as well as Enzebao Cheese under the cheese recruit New Hope.

In the Chinese cheese industry, Sanyuan is the enterprise with the largest total cheese production capacity, while Miaoke Lando is the fastest growing cheese enterprise, and has the title of "the first share of domestic cheese", the company's scale and market penetration rate have run out of the industry speed in recent years.

According to the latest performance forecast data released by Miaoke Lando, in the first half of this year, the company's revenue is expected to be 2 billion yuan - 2.1 billion yuan, an increase of 84.67% - 93.91% year-on-year; the net profit is expected to be 95 million yuan - 110 million yuan, an increase of 194.83% - 241.38% year-on-year. According to The 2021 revenue target of 4 billion yuan, the annual target has been completed by more than half.

In the face of competitors who continue to join the market, Chai Xiao, chairman of Miaoke Lando, told the "Securities Daily" reporter that competitors are more competitive teammates. As the industry boss, you can't make other enterprises unable to survive after growing and growing, but more importantly, you must protect the healthy development of the industry and work with other companies to make the market bigger and stronger.

In fact, when a market is hot, there must be a large amount of capital and enterprises pouring in, and price wars are often inevitable. In this regard, Chai Xiao said that the price war began last year and showed a normalized trend. "Miaoke Lando will not take the initiative to fight a price war, and the price war will damage the interests of dealers and hurt the company's brand." In the face of the price war, The approach of Miaoke Lando is to win market recognition and protect its market share by continuously upgrading products, product quality, brand promotion and brand activities. ”

Full-load production competes for 10 billion yuan market cake

Cheese has now become a new driving force for the dairy industry. In the past two years, almost all cheese companies have been increasing the output of remanufactured cheese, and the equipment of enterprises is running under high load.

"The market demand is large, our production capacity can not keep up, and now with the blessing of Mengniu, the company has also reserved production lines." The relevant person in charge of Miaoke Lando told reporters that new products will be continuously launched according to market demand in the future.

Zhang Shuyi, a researcher at the National Animal Husbandry Station, also analyzed to reporters that in 2020, the yield of Miaoke Lando children's cheese reached 100%, and the sliced cheese of the three yuan exclusively for McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut increased rapidly. According to last year's compound growth rate (CAGR of 22.6%), in 2021, the national children's cheese will reach more than 10 billion yuan. There will be a doubling trend in the future. In addition, the increase in imported cheese year after year can also reflect the rapid growth of refined cheese.

Luo Zhigang, general manager of Beijing Yinhe Road Economic and Trade Co., Ltd., said that when the per capita milk consumption of various countries reaches a certain level, "eating milk" will be greater than "drinking milk", at present, China is mainly "drinking milk" and is changing to "eating milk".

Luo Zhigang introduced that in recent years, China's cheese imports have continued to grow, and cheese imports in 2019 were 114,900 tons, an increase of 6% year-on-year; In 2020, cheese imports were 129,300 tons, an increase of 12.5% year-on-year; in 2021, cheese imports were 8.27 million tons, an increase of 66.4% year-on-year. "According to the USDA and the China Dairy Association, China's cheese imports accounted for a faster growth rate in global imports from 1% in 2008 to 8% in 2019."

Speaking of the future development prospects of China's cheese market, Luo Yamei, an analyst at Western Securities, predicts that by 2025, the size of China's cheese market will reach 28.8 billion yuan to 33.3 billion yuan, of which the retail end and the catering end are expected to reach 19.3 billion yuan - 20.4 billion yuan, 9.5 billion yuan - 12.9 billion yuan, respectively.

"In recent years, the total sales of China's cheese market to maintain an average annual growth rate of more than 20%, becoming the fastest growing segment of the dairy industry, the future will continue to maintain a high degree of prosperity, compared with the foreign mature cheese market, China's cheese industry has a lot of room for development, we will be through five to ten years of efforts, is expected to create a hundred billion market size." Chai Xuan judged so.

Chai Xuan introduced, "At present, Miaoke Lando has strategically established a room temperature business unit, and will make a strategic layout in the future in terms of ambient leisure snacks, including fashionable snacks for children and young people, as well as functional cheese. ”

In fact, the only way to make consumers willing to pay is to win with the product. As an industry leader, Mioclando insists on insight into consumer needs and develops cheese products that are suitable for Chinese nutrition and taste. "Miaoke Lando has its own thinking on product development, adheres to self-positioning, refuses to blindly follow the wind, has insight into the health needs of consumers, continues to develop healthy and nutritious cheese products, and escorts the future development of the enterprise with strong product strength." Chai Xuan stressed.

As a segment of the dairy industry, the prospects of the cheese market are undoubtedly good, in the face of the upcoming target cake of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions, dairy companies have increased the size of cheese products, trying to cut a larger cake in this segment, and in the future market scramble, the price war has begun, the competition will be more white-hot, for enterprises, not only have high-quality products, brand power and channel power can not be less.

(Edited by Cui Man Cai Shandan)