According to recent information, Mancoton Food (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Mancoton Shanghai Company") was fined 60,000 yuan by the Shanghai Minhang District Market Supervision Bureau for making false publicity about bread products such as "low fat" and "no sugar" on multiple e-commerce platforms.
On March 14, Mancoton responded to the Beijing News reporter that for 344 consumers who purchased related products during the period involved, the company will refund them unconditionally and provide a Mancoton product that meets the national "sugar-free" or "low-fat" standards.
According to the data, since being acquired by the global baking giant Bimbo in 2018, Mancoton has become an important starting point for the Bimbo Group to develop brand bakery products, develop catering channels and promote market growth in the Chinese market.
According to industry insiders, Binbo and Manhattan like to benchmark international first-line brands in the B-end market and have strong competitiveness, while in the C-end market, the sinking channels and brand influence are not as good as the "bread first share" Taoli bread. Bakery brands such as Mancoton and Pastoralism frequently make a fuss about nutritional content claims, which is related to the fierce competition and healthy development of the industry at present.
Many of Mancoton's online stores are involved in false propaganda
After investigation by the regulatory authorities, on August 20, 2021, the Mancoton Tmall flagship store released the sales link of "Mancoton Super alcohol series toast bread Original whole wheat toast sandwich DIY breakfast food leisure low fat", which was confirmed and confirmed by the parties concerned, the products sold by the link were Mancoton super alcohol original bread and Mancoton super alcohol whole wheat bread, and the nutrition facts sheet showed that the fat content was 4.2 grams per 100 grams of products and 3.4 grams of fat per 100 grams of products.
Mancoton Superol Whole Wheat Bread contains 3.4 grams of fat per 100 grams of product. Photo/ Photo by Guo Tie, chief reporter of the Beijing News
According to the requirements of the National Standard for Food Safety and the General Principles of Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods (GB 28050-2011) on energy and nutrient content claims, solid foods claim to be "low fat", and the fat content should not be higher than 3g/100g. The related super-alcohol series of breads sold at the Mancoton Tmall flagship store uses the "low fat" advertising slogan, which is inconsistent with reality.
Mancorton's flagship stores in JD.com and Pinduoduo also have similar false publicity problems. On August 20, 2021, the Mancoton Jingdong flagship store posted the sales link of "[3 cans of combination 60g/can] Mancoton nut cereal crackers snacks afternoon tea supper biscuits casual sugar-free food snacks 180g (3 cans)" on the webpage, and the product names sold by the link were "Mancoton Rye Nut Shortbread", "Mancoton Chia Seed Fruit Shortbread" and "Mancoton Cereal Red Date Shortbread".
The test report showed that the sugar content in these three shortbreads was 19.6g/100g, 16.1g/100g, and 17.8g/100g, respectively, which did not meet the sugar-free claim requirements stipulated in the General Principles of Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods, that is, ≤ 0.5g/100g (solid), and their "sugar-free" advertising slogans were inconsistent with reality.
The Mancoton Pinduoduo flagship store also advertised "sugar-free" in the product detail page of "Fruit and Vegetable Whole Wheat European Bread" released to the outside world. However, the test report showed that the sugar content in its "fruit and vegetable whole-wheat European-wrapped bread (pumpkin flavor)" was 19.6g/100g, which also did not meet the requirements of the sugar-free claim stipulated in the General Principles of Nutrition Labeling of Prepackaged Foods, and the promotion of "sugar-free" was inconsistent with the actual situation.
According to the administrative penalty decision, the above-mentioned acts of Mancoton Food (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. violated the relevant provisions of the Advertising Law and the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and constituted false advertising and false publicity. On January 20, 2022, the Shanghai Minhang District Market Supervision Bureau imposed a total fine of 60,000 yuan on him. By the end of the investigation, Mancoton Shanghai had revised the contents of each online store and stopped the publication of relevant illegal advertisements.
Screenshot of the administrative penalty decision.
The 344 consumers involved are eligible for unconditional refunds
For the reasons for the above publicity problems, Mancoton replied to the Beijing News reporter on March 14 that while e-commerce as the company's emerging business is developing rapidly, the company's corresponding rules and regulations formulation, process management, relevant laws and regulations training for operators, real-time keen grasp of the rules of each e-commerce platform and other soft power construction still needs to be gradually improved, "This is the main reason for improper publicity in the company's online store." ”
Mancoton said it has taken a series of measures, including modifying or deleting inappropriate promotional content on the three e-commerce platforms involved; communicating with 3 complainants, making explanations and obtaining understandings; organizing inspections of the advertising content of products sold throughout the network; organizing training for relevant departments and employees; optimizing the management process and specifications for e-commerce product listing, clarifying the scope of responsibility, and strengthening the audit mechanism.
According to Mancoton, at present, the company has counted that from the release of improper publicity to the completion of correction, a total of 344 consumers have placed orders to buy the goods involved on the three e-commerce platforms, including 288 tmall, 8 Jingdong, and 48 Pinduoduo. "We will provide unconditional refunds to all of the above consumers, and will also provide consumers with a free copy of a Mancoton product that fully complies with the national 'sugar-free' or 'low-fat' standards."
The C-end market is facing challenges such as peach and plum bread
According to official information, the Manhattan brand was born in 1995, "a star brand in China's baking industry, with obvious market share advantages", and was acquired by the global baking giant Bimbo Group in 2018. Founded in Mexico in 1945, the Bimbo Group produces more than 13,000 products in 33 countries around the world, with net sales of approximately MXN 348.887 billion (US$16.67 billion) in 2021.
In 2006, The Bimbo Group established Bimbo (Beijing) Food Co., Ltd. in China, which is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of prepackaged foods such as sliced bread, fancy bread, cake, burger and sandwich. On 28 June 2018, the Bimbo Group announced the completion of the acquisition of the Manhattan trademark and 100% stake for US$200 million.
Daniel Servitje, President of the Bimbo Group, said at the time that Mancoton had established a large customer base in major Cities in China, and its business could complement and strengthen Bimbo's existing product portfolio, distribution network and production facilities, providing Bimbo with a market opportunity to develop branded bakery products and develop food and beverage channels.
In its 2020 financial report, the Bimbo Group placed a particular emphasis on the significant synergy effect of the acquisition of Mancoton, especially in the northern Chinese market. In the eyes of the baking industry, the "marriage" between Bimbo and Mancoton has formed a north-south encirclement of the main competitor of the C-end market, "bread first share" peach and plum bread.
Bimburg has "married" Mancoton. Photo/ Photo by Guo Tie, chief reporter of the Beijing News
According to the research report of 30,000 Capital, Taoli Bread, Mancoton and Dali's Meibaochen are typical representatives of short-term prepackaged bakery products in offline supermarket channels, focusing on the "central factory + wholesale" model. However, from the perspective of market share and production capacity layout, there is still a certain gap between Bimbo and Taoli bread in the C-end market.
According to public information, by the end of 2020, Taoli Bread has established production bases in 19 regions across the country, with 37 major subsidiaries. In contrast, Mancoton has only four companies in China, serving Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan and Guangdong and the surrounding area. According to the enterprise investigation, Bimbo (Beijing) Food Co., Ltd. has 8 branches, mainly distributed in Jinan, Tianjin, Shenyang, Shijiazhuang and other northern regions, of which 2 branches are in the state of deregistration.
According to Zhou Yonghuai (pseudonym), a supplier marketing manager close to Binbo, in the C-end market, The customer groups and price ranges of Bimbo, Mancoton and Taoli Bread are similar, and they belong to the benchmark products. In contrast, the Taoli bread brand is stronger, the channel sinking, online sales performance is also better than Mancoton, which can be seen from the reach rate of Beijing and Shanghai consumers to the two brands.
The Beijing News reporter recently visited some supermarkets and convenience stores in Beijing and found that Mancoton, Bimbo, Taoli Bread and Meibaochen are pre-packaged baking brands mainly sold by supermarkets and stores. In convenience store channels such as convenience bees, only the figure of peach and plum bread is often seen, and Binbourg and Mancoton will appear in some community supermarkets.
Although the C-end performance is not as good as Taoli bread, Zhou Yonghuai believes that Bimbo has a strong competitive strength in the B-end market, and its hamburger billet and other products are supplied to global brands such as McDonald's and KFC, and internal research and development for local customers is also underway.
For the competitive position in the Chinese market, Mancoton responded to the Beijing News reporter that at present, Bimbo has 10 factories in China, which is an important market for the global layout of The Bimbo Group. At the B-end, The Bimbo Group cooperates with a number of world fast food chains, airlines and large enterprises to provide raw materials such as hamburger blanks, hot dog blanks, sliced toast, etc.; in the C-end market, through the layout of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, as well as the dual brand operation of Bimbo and Mankoton, the market competitiveness is enhanced. At present, The Bimbo Group sells more than 100 products to the C-end, covering tens of thousands of sales points across the country.
Competition is fierce to play the concept of "health"
In fact, Mancoton isn't the first baking brand to have problems with nutrient claims.
In August 2021, the official WeChat of the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission released a test report showing that the "pastoral whole wheat bread", which claimed to be the first seller, Wei Ya brought goods, and was recommended by Dr. Lilac, had a measured energy 40% higher than the advertised value, and carbohydrates were about 16% more than the nominal value. The Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission believes that low standards and indiscriminate standards are dishonest acts and even more irresponsible to consumers. In this regard, Zhu Jiangtao, the founder of the pastoralist brand, apologized through the video, saying that he was derelict in his management as the "no. 1 position of the enterprise".
Chen Yinjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law Research Association of the China Law Society, said in an interview with the Beijing News reporter that "as a food with light food and low calories as the main selling point, its energy, carbohydrate and other content are very important reference information for consumers to make purchase choices." If the company falsely labels this information that is important to consumers, it will undoubtedly deceive or mislead consumers. ”
Bakery brands like to make a fuss about nutritional claims, which has a lot to do with the increasingly competitive environment. In the traditional supermarket channel, Mancoton has to face direct competition from similar brand products such as Tao Li Bread and Mei Bak chen. In addition to traditional baking brands, snack foods such as Three Squirrels, Liangpin Shop, Ma Dajie, and Yanjin Shop have also launched their own baking products, and baking and fresh food have become the direction of many convenience stores and beverage stores' own brands.
Wen Zhihong, a chain management expert of Hejun Consulting, previously believed in an interview with the Beijing News reporter that bread is a high-frequency consumer product, with relatively high gross profit and a strong "convenience" attribute, so many large-scale convenience store chain systems incorporate bread categories into their own brands and commodity strategy systems. The rise of convenience store channels and the launch of private brands will form a certain competitive pressure on similar products in traditional supermarket channels.
The pressure can be seen in the financial data. In 2020, the net profit of Taoli Bread fell by 13.51%, ushering in the first decline in nearly a decade. For how to break the situation, 30,000 Capital mentioned in the baking research report released in 2021 that fresh, healthy, low-sugar, low-oil short-term and medium-guarantee baking products are currently one of the baking formats favored by capital and entrepreneurs.
Zhou Yonghuai confirmed to the Beijing News reporter that sugar-free, oil-free and other health attributes are a major trend in the development of the baking industry after the epidemic, "My customers are adding weight, sugar, flour and other materials are very elaborate." The Bimbo Group also highlighted in its 2020 earnings report that Mancoton successfully launched a single-packaged sugar-free and fat-free whole wheat bread in China.
The Bimbo Group's 2020 financial report mentions the launch of sugar-free and fat-free whole wheat bread in the Chinese market. Photo/Screenshot of earnings report.
As for how to deal with market competition, Mancoton explained that the Bimbo Group builds its core competitiveness with consumer demand as the center, rather than blindly following the trend. In addition to developing new products and expanding emerging channels in combination with local concepts, it has also increased the development of health products, including strengthening traditional advantageous product lines such as whole wheat and high fiber, removing the industry's controversial azoformamide (ADA) from flour, and moving towards the goal of natural flavors and natural colors. These actions on the "clean label" side "present us with higher challenges in terms of production cost control and difficulty in obtaining raw materials".
Guo Tie, chief reporter of the Beijing News
Edited by Li Yan Proofreader Lu Qian Guo Li