Dexin Food launched A-share listing: providing beverage formulations for Starbucks and Haidilao

"Before the IPO, CITIC Capital held 9.6545% of the shares of Dexin Foods."

This article is original for the IPO long known

The author | Stone Jin

According to the news of the IPO, Zhejiang Dexin Food Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dexin Food") signed a listing counseling agreement with Anxin Securities on July 19 to officially launch the A-share listing.

From the perspective of development history, Dexin Food, which was established in 2012, can be traced back to 2008, in 2009, Dexin Food launched the Dexin Zhenxuan Fruit and Vegetable Juice Concentrate Series, and then took the lead in launching juice BIB packaging and current mixing machine in the domestic catering market in 2012; from 2014 to 2019, Dexin Food successively launched product categories such as Flavor Picker Solid Drink, Aseptic Tetra Packed Juice Products, Flavor Syrup and NFC Tea Soup; in 2020, Dexin Food launched a sub-brand "Xinzhi Flavor". Focus on plant protein, light fat milk and other health concept products.

At present, the brands of Dexin Food include Dexin Zhenxuan, ZhenguoXian, Pu'er Food Carving, Bei Duofen, Xinzhi Flavor, Taste Picker, etc.

Among them, Dexin Zhenxuan is the first BIB packaged concentrated juice suitable for the current beverage machine in China; Zhenguo Fresh focuses on the combination of high-end juice and tea; Pu'er Food Carving is a standardized tea soup product created by the original leaf fresh extraction process; Bei Duofen's positioning is to provide raw materials and flavored syrup for the coffee system; Taste Picker focuses on the combination of traditional Chinese food culture and advanced plant extract technology; Xinzhi flavor is a new brand that tries food technology and innovation, and now has thick coconut coconut milk and other products.

In terms of internationalization, Dexin Food has established Dexin Asia Pacific (Singapore) Co., Ltd. and Dexin Food & Beverage (Malaysia) Co., Ltd. successively, thereby opening up the Southeast Asian market.

In addition, Dexin Foods also provides product concept design and recipe development services for many brands, such as more than ten products such as flavored syrup, juice concentrate and flavored milk drinks for Starbucks, sour plum soup for Haidilao, and sea buckthorn juice for Zhen Kung Fu and Ajisen ramen.

In terms of production capacity. Dexin Food now has three factories in Jiaxing, covering the first aseptic filling line for concentrated fruit juice products in China, a sterile Tetra Pak bag production line with an annual production capacity of 36,000 tons, a solid powder production line with an annual production capacity of 5,000 tons, a BIB production line with an annual production capacity of 18,000 tons, a PET production line with an annual production capacity of 18,000 tons, a sterile PET cold irrigation line, a tea production line, etc.

It is worth noting that more than ten years after its establishment, Dexin Food first introduced an external investor, CITIC Capital, which held 9.6545% of the shares before the IPO.

On July 2 this year, Qin Liuwei, executive director of CITIC Capital, said that food and beverage enterprises began to move from "single ingredients" to "comprehensive solutions", optimistic about the comprehensive combination strategy based on natural health products such as oats, coconut milk and thick milk, with compounding as the innovation point and customized development as the service model.

"B2B ingredient enterprises represented by Dexin Food can try to break through the market with the help of product portfolio innovation, customer structure diversity, and technical service reform." Qin Liuwei said.

Jiang Xubin, senior consultant of CITIC Capital and expert of catering ingredients industry, pointed out that the innovative research and development capabilities and full-menu service strategy of Dexin Food are worthy of reference by catering ingredients enterprises.

According to the planning of Dexin Food, the current plant-based 1.0 strategy can be understood as a single plant protein product such as oat milk and nut milk, and the content of plant protein in protein and some trace elements is still a certain gap compared with dairy products such as milk; the future plant-based 2.0 strategy will be produced through advanced technology and equipment for protein recombination in accordance with nutritional requirements.

In the expansion of new categories, Dexin Food plans to lay out new categories through mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures.