The title image is derived from the movie "The Strange Journey of Young Spevie"
Author: Ringing Horse, Special Commentator of New Retail Business Review
"It's not that you don't want to, but you can't..."
The "breakfast shop" that Wenzhou people are most familiar with has been successfully listed, and its market value has exceeded 10 billion yuan.
On December 28, 2020, Yiming Food landed on A shares, with an opening price of 13.26 yuan per share, an increase of 43.97% over the issue price, and a market value of 5.317 billion yuan on the first day. Since then, Yiming Food has continued to rise and fall, and as of the close of trading on January 7, 2021, the market value has reached 10.37 billion yuan.
Yiming Food is sought after by capital, and at the same time, the company's development trend has attracted wide attention.
As of the end of June last year, the number of "Yiming Real Fresh Milk Bar" stores was 1699, and the radiation range included Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Shanghai and other East China regions, of which 1428 in Zhejiang, accounting for 84%, and the revenue of Zhejiang in 2019 was 1.614 billion yuan, accounting for 80.79%.
Because of this, the media called Yiming Food a "regional enterprise" and believed that it could only be partial to the free mail area. Is this really the case?
<h1 style="text-align: center;"> a radius of 700 km </h1>
Initially, Yiming Foods only produced fresh milk.
In the 1990s, Wenzhou's dairy industry continued to decline, and the number of dairy cattle plummeted to the bottom of the country, and citizens could not buy fresh milk. Faced with the dilemma of the industry, Zhu Mingchun, who was originally the "king of chicken raising", found a business opportunity, he used the protective price to buy fresh milk from dairy farmers and began to get involved in milk production and sales.
In order to make the low-temperature fresh milk produced by itself reach the hands of consumers faster, Yiming Food chose to enter the community and cooperate with breakfast restaurants. When it won 70% of the fresh milk market in Wenzhou, Yiming Food was no longer satisfied with providing fresh milk for the breakfast shop, but hoped to "go down".
In May 2002, the first "Yiming Real Fresh Milk Bar" was officially opened in a community in Wenzhou, providing "24-hour fresh milk" for community residents.
Every day at four or five o'clock in the morning, many people are still immersed in sleep, and fresh milk has been sent to the stores of "Yiming Real Fresh Milk Bar" by fresh chain truck. Subsequently, the clerk put fresh milk, bread and other products on the shelves, and opened the door to welcome customers who went to school and work.
Because the shelf life of low-temperature dairy products is usually within 15 days, and the shelf life of baked goods is usually less than 4 days, Yiming Food adopts the retail model of "central factory + chain stores", and can sell fresh dairy products and baked goods with short shelf life at the same time.
Compared with the "central factory + wholesale distribution" usually used by food manufacturing enterprises, the model of "central factory + chain stores" pioneered by Yiming has undoubtedly formed a differentiated competition.
Relying on this "sharp weapon", coupled with the successive launch of "school children's milk plan" and "milk delivery to home" and other emerging milk consumption methods, "Yiming real fresh milk bar" penetrates into all corners of the Wenzhou market, and even some media say that the sale form of Yiming food "fresh milk + bread" has changed the breakfast habits of Wenzhou people 'porridge, buns, and fritters'.
When Yiming accumulated a certain brand influence, it began to expand from Wenzhou to the surrounding areas.
To expand outward, we must first solve the problem of production capacity.
In 2005, Yiming built the first self-owned ecological pasture in Taishun County, Wenzhou, and in 2009, it established 40 core pastures.
In 2011, we introduced high-quality pasture grass and pure pedigree Holstein and Juanshan dairy cattle from Australia, and established a comprehensive animal husbandry management system including pasture planting and dairy cattle breeding.
Repeated operations gradually solved the problem of milk source required for outward expansion, and Yiming Food accelerated the pace of expansion.
At present, there are 1699 stores, of which 441 are directly operated stores and 1258 are franchised stores, radiating East China such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian and Shanghai.
However, at present, the production base of Yiming Food is mainly in Wenzhou, and it is limited by the characteristics of fast consumption with freshness and short shelf life, and the radius of product transportation and sales can only be "circled" at about 700 kilometers and 8 hours by car.
In other words, in order to continue to expand outward, out of the free mail area, and even to the whole country, Yiming needs to build a production base outside Wenzhou and vigorously increase the production capacity of fresh milk and baked products.
<h1 style="text-align: center;" > the difficulty of capacity increase </h1>
The main purpose of Yiming Food is to expand production capacity.
It is understood that Yiming Food plans to raise 927 million yuan of the funds raised, respectively, into the marketing network directly operated milk bar construction project, Jiangsu Yiming food production base project, the annual output of 30,000 tons of bakery products new project and R & D center and information construction project.
Source corporate prospectus
Media analysis believes that the fundraising project can further improve the scale of production and operation of Yiming food, Jiangsu Yiming food production base project phase I dairy project is expected to achieve 94,900 tons of dairy production capacity after completion and production, the annual output of 30,000 tons of baked products new project is expected to achieve 30,000 tons of baked food production capacity per year.
Perhaps it is too urgent, the media combed and found that the construction project of Yiming Food's continuous expansion of capacity has repeatedly appeared the phenomenon of "building before approval", and even "renting instead of requisitioning" to occupy farmland, which is suspected of violating the law.
Among them, Jiangsu Yiming Food Production Base, which is a project implemented by this financing, has officially started construction on August 12, 2018. The media inquired on the national online approval and supervision platform for investment projects, and among the five approvals passed by the project, there was no approval of environmental assessment; in the environmental impact assessment information publicity platform, there was also no relevant information about the project.
In addition, according to jiaxing Yiming Food Co., Ltd., the groundbreaking ceremony was held in June 2018, but the project is still in the state of approval; among the projects under construction disclosed by the company, the "construction project with an annual output of 560 tons of plastic products and 3600 tons of rice products" has begun construction in 2018, and the EIA is only in the stage of acceptance and approval.
Image source green network
In addition to the repeated "unapproved construction", the 4,000-mu pasture project led by Changzhou Mingyuan, a wholly-owned sun company of Yiming Food, is located in Qianzhuang Village, Jincheng Town, Jintan District, Changzhou, and after media inquiries, it was learned that it obtained the right to use 658 mu of rice fields at a total rent of 2.9939 million yuan through the way of "renting instead of requisitioning".
It should be known that in order to protect farmland, the relevant judicial departments pointed out that "cultivated land with good water conservancy and soil and water conservation facilities, along railways, highways and other transportation routes, and around cities and villages, and market towns and construction land areas, should be prioritized for basic farmland." Moreover, the occupation of basic farmland is only approved by the State Council.
It is worth mentioning that there are already "warnings" in front. In August 2020, Henan Makihara Group was exposed for occupying farmland to build pig farms in Nanyang City, and the Nanyang Municipal Government immediately set up a special investigation team to require Makihara Group to stop the construction of the project.
Despite the lack of risks, Yiming Food is still working hard to promote the two production bases in Changzhou and Jiaxing. A promotional article by Yiming Food said: "After the completion of the two production bases in Changzhou and Jiaxing, it will help the company further strengthen its market coverage in Jiangsu, Shanghai and some Anhui regions." ”
On the one hand, the production capacity that needs to be urgently improved, on the other hand, the requirements of the compliance of the construction project, how to reconcile the conflict between the two, and move forward quickly and steadily, is a major challenge in the current stage of Yiming Food.
< h1 style="text-align: center;" > giant acceleration squeeze </h1>
What affects the outward expansion of Yiming Food is not only the production capacity, but also the brand influence is also a link that cannot be ignored.
Yiming Food is deeply rooted in Zhejiang, and "Yiming Real Fresh Milk Bar" also has a certain brand influence in Zhejiang, but in areas outside Zhejiang, the brand influence has decreased sharply.
In March 2018, a Shanghai media outlet said bluntly: "For Shanghainese, Shanghai Bright Food Group has long heard of it, and Zhejiang Yiming Food Co., Ltd. is not very good." ”
Although it has opened stores in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Fujian and other places, Yiming's influence in the local area has not increased significantly, and the franchise stores in Shanghai and Fujian have only maintained single-digit growth in two and a half years.
The person in charge of a large dairy company analyzed the media: "In Shanghai and other first- and second-tier cities, the competition between fresh milk and baking brands is very fierce, Yiming's brand power is insufficient, the homogenization of products and competitors is serious, coupled with the high cost of opening stores and personnel, it is simply to copy the local model of Yiming real fresh milk bar in Zhejiang to other regions, which is not enough to support its stores to blossom everywhere." ”
As for the third- and fourth-tier cities and townships, Yiming's brand power is even weaker, and it is more difficult to open the market due to the restrictions of consumption concept, consumption capacity, cold chain transportation and room temperature milk consumption habits.
When The power of Yiming food is not caught, the low-temperature fresh milk track is getting hotter and hotter, and the giants have long been in the fight.
Guangming and Sanyuan are the national leaders of the low-temperature milk market, especially the former "one brother" of China's dairy industry, Guangming, missed the development opportunities of room temperature milk, was surpassed by Yili and Mengniu, and now low-temperature milk has become a trend, and Guangming has riveted enough energy to accelerate the layout of pastures, channels and products.
Yili and Mengniu have also made their own moves: Mengniu's factories in Qingyuan, Guangdong, Tianjin and other places have been officially put into operation, and co-or-cola China has set up a new joint venture to jointly produce low-temperature fresh milk with a shelf life of less than seven days; Yili has also launched a number of new low-temperature fresh milk products such as Jindian fresh milk, pasture early morning fresh milk, Yili fresh milk and so on.
In this regard, Yuanqi Capital researcher Ning Bowei believes that low-temperature milk must be another "hunting ground for giants".
In an article discussing the "battle for low-temperature milk", Ning Bowei analyzed that the price of low-temperature pasteurized milk is about three or four times that of ambient milk, but there is almost no difference in the cost of raw materials between the two, and "the main barrier is actually concentrated on logistics costs."
NingBowei predicted: "With the acceleration and improvement of the national cold chain transportation system, companies with scale advantages will continue to reduce supply chain costs in competition, so that regional leaders will face the 'squeeze' of national leaders." ”
In the face of the accelerated attack of the national leader, Yiming Food said that what it had to do was to "quickly open up the market and form a coverage penetration of the new market area."
However, Yiming Food's eyes are still focused on East China. According to public information, Yiming Food plans to complete the construction investment of 540 directly operated milk bar stores and schools, hospitals and street shops in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai and Fujian in East China within 3 years, and focus on the construction of subway transportation hub stores in major cities such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Fuzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi and so on, "then the company's regional competitiveness will be greatly improved."
This means that for a long time, Yiming Food will still be partial to East China, which is mainly a free mail area. Going out of East China and going to the whole country, it's not that you don't want to, you can't...
Today's topic: Do you think regional enterprises must go global? Why?