Source: Economic Daily
Drive from Beijing to Chabei Administrative District, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, all the way west to north. Walking to the dam at an altitude of 1,450 meters, the sky is high and the clouds are low, and the view is suddenly wide. Junlebao Dairy Group Banner Baby Dairy Co., Ltd. is located on this grassland.
On January 24, 2017, General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected Banner Baby Milk Products Co., Ltd. He stressed that the mainland is a big country in dairy production and consumption, and it is necessary to make the dairy industry stronger and better, produce high-quality dairy products that satisfy and rest assured by the people, create an internationally competitive dairy industry, and cultivate a dairy brand with world reputation.
Sincerely entrusted, earnestly expected. In accordance with the high-quality development direction guided by the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's dairy industry is forging ahead with vigor and courage on the new journey.
Located in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, Junlebao Dairy Group Banner Baby Milk Co., Ltd. (Profile photo)
Eliminating "mistrust" is like rolling a stone up a hill
The Mongolian language refers to mountains as "dams". Separated by a dam, the scenery is very different: the dam is a wavy plateau, and the horizon is gently undulating; Under the dam are the peaks of the Yanshan Mountains, and rugged mountain roads pass through them.
In the history of China's dairy industry, there is also a dam. The detection of melamine in Sanlu milk powder in 2008 was the end and the beginning. What ends is the barbaric growth of individual enterprises; What opened was the rebirth of the entire industry.
The melamine incident has seriously damaged the overall credibility of China's dairy industry, and market confidence has plummeted. After the incident, the whole industry made a painstaking decision, from market supervision to production and marketing, and did its best to win back the trust of consumers, and the quality of dairy products was greatly improved. But the market is still chilling: from 2008 to 2012, the import volume of the domestic milk powder market increased from 140,000 tons to nearly 600,000 tons; In the infant milk powder market, foreign brands strongly occupy more than eighty percent of the share.
"The melamine incident taught the industry a lesson in integrity." Wei Lihua, chairman of Junlebao Dairy Group, said. Founded in 1995, Junlebao mainly used yogurt in its early products, before it set foot in the milk powder industry. Witnessing the drastic changes in the industry, Junlebao has become more and more firmly adhering to the business philosophy of "being a conscientious milk". But every time he sees Chinese people rushing to buy infant milk powder in boxes overseas, Wei Lihua feels heartache.
In 2013, when the performance of the domestic brand market almost slipped to a trough, the "Opinions of the People's Government of Hebei Province on Accelerating the Development of the Province's Milk Powder Industry" was issued, proposing to build a first-class milk source base, expand and strengthen the Hebei milk powder industry, and cultivate well-known brands. Wei Lihua tested the management team: Do you want to seize this opportunity to give it a go? The management team unanimously agreed. These dairy veterans like him have a deep desire to break the ground -
"Make milk powder and give Chinese consumers an explanation!"
Leaving behind a comfortable day and entering unfamiliar territory, faced with a series of choices: OEM or homegrown? Produced domestically or abroad? Do you want to use the Junlebao brand or start from scratch?
Junlebao chose the most difficult road: in Hebei and Shijiazhuang, make milk powder, infant milk powder, and use the Junlebao brand.
put on equipment, bought cows, and staked all the family money; And using its own main brand is betting on the future.
On April 12, 2014, when the first can of milk powder of Junlebao rolled off the production line, the daughter of Liu Senmiao, vice president of the group and general manager of the milk powder business department, was 6 months old and ate her own milk powder. Liu Senmiao recalls that a neighbor came to her home several times on the pretext of borrowing things, and "saw us feeding our children milk powder, so they bought a few cans for their children."
It's not so much about creating a brand as about eliminating "mistrust" in the minds of consumers. Dozens of advertisements on the radio every day, free milk powder still not delivered; I finally received some user feedback, most of which was "steamed steamed buns are good"; Others, after opening the can, return it.
There are no physical channels willing to sell, so they have to sell directly through the Internet and telephone, but unexpectedly open a breakthrough. With excellent quality and moderate price, Junlebao milk powder has a reputation among consumers. During the "Double 11" period in 2014, Junlebao became the sales champion of Tmall, a position that has been occupied by foreign brands in previous years.
Since then, the milk powder segment of Junlebao Group has achieved an average annual compound growth rate of 84.5%, almost 10 times the average growth rate of the industry. In 2021, the annual sales volume of milk powder exceeded 100,000 tons, accounting for about half of the sales revenue of the group, surpassing yogurt as the largest business segment.
Liu Senmiao's proudest data is his "market share" calculated by heads-"4 million consumers choose our products, that is, 4 million parents have entrusted us with the health and safety of their children".
The process of rebuilding trust is like rolling stones up a hill. "Hearing General Secretary Xi Jinping say that I want the next generation of the motherland to drink good milk powder, I can no longer hold back my tears. All the hard work and effort over the years has been worth it. Wei Lihua said.
Knowing enough, and then being able to reflexively; Know the difficulties, and then be able to improve yourself. Over the years, the dairy market access and regulatory system have been continuously improved, and the world's strictest safety defense line has been established in all aspects of production, processing and circulation; At the same time, Chinese dairy enterprises continue to improve their sense of mission and responsibility, and rebuild trust with quality. Driven by internal and external factors, the food safety level of dairy products in China has reached the best level in history.
The most gratifying thing is the vote of confidence cast by consumers. The 13th China Dairy Conference held in September this year came with the news: the market share of domestic brand infant formula milk powder increased from less than 30% in 2012 to 68%, which reversed the weak position of domestic brands in one fell swoop and achieved the goal of domestic brands playing a leading role in the market.
"Infant formula is a landmark product in dairy products and a touchstone for the quality and quality of China's dairy industry." Liu Changquan, director of the Industrial Economics Research Office of the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that this market change reflects the basic recovery of consumer confidence in domestic brands.
How "transparent milk" is made
"Good milk powder or Lai milk powder, you can see it with the naked eye." After Junlebao milk powder went on the market, Liu Senmiao often went to the store to teach consumers the tips of identifying quality: first spread it on white paper, look at the particle size and color; Then use boiling water to see whether it is hung on the wall and whether it is precipitated; Taste at the end.
However, just by looking and tasting, it cannot be easily recognized by consumers. Speaking with quality is the best way to rebuild trust.
On the corporate culture wall of Junlebao, there is such a sentence: "We can only do our best, because we have no choice". How to do it best? Junlebao's answer is: from milk source to factory, from quality management to certification standards, comprehensively benchmarking against the most advanced international level.
This is a quality shaped by a modern production system.
Since its establishment in 2013, Junlebao Dairy Town in Luquan District, Shijiazhuang City has become an "Internet celebrity check-in place", receiving millions of visitors.
Opening up the entire production process from farm to factory, Junlebao calls the "transparent milk powder plan". The intention is obvious: to let consumers "see is believing" and eliminate doubts caused by information asymmetry.
In the workshop of Junyuan Milk Powder Factory, a subsidiary of Junlebao, visitors saw the "true appearance" of China's dairy industry as a modern manufacturing industry: huge milk tanks, towering spray towers, vertical and horizontal pipelines, forming a shining steel castle. Starting from the milk silo, homogenization, degassing, pasteurization, vacuum evaporation, powder spray drying... Cans of milk powder line up to enter the three-dimensional warehouse.
There was no milk to see the whole time, and there were only a few workers debugging the equipment on the entire production line. Zhang Jianchao, director of Junyuan Milk Powder Factory, introduced that this production line integrates advanced technology from more than 20 countries, densely packed with more than 1,500 digital sensors, and all production processes are highly intelligent.
"We're going to 'tube' the air." Zhang Jianchao said that after three-stage filtration, automatic spray disinfection system and ultraviolet sterilization, the air cleanliness of the infant formula area reached 100,000 levels of cleanliness based on the number of dust particles and floating bacteria allowed per cubic meter; The filling workshop built in accordance with the national drug GMP standard has reached 100 levels of ultra-clean.
This is safety guarded by whole-process quality management.
It is recalled that in October 2008, the Shijiazhuang quality supervision department issued a notice to local dairy enterprises that had suspended production for more than ten days affected by the melamine incident, clearly requiring that the "first thing to do" after resuming production was to be equipped with professional testing equipment.
Today, the total investment of Junyuan factory inspection center alone has reached more than 40 million yuan. In different analysis rooms such as liquid mass spectrometry, gas phase mass spectrometry and spectroscopy, more than 60 professional inspectors and more than 200 sets of inspection equipment are busy.
Zhang Yaoguang, director of the Group's Food Safety Center, said that Continental implements "the strictest quality standards in the world" for infant milk powder. From raw milk to finished products, from pesticide residues to microorganisms, there are hundreds of tests stipulated by the state, of which the number of standard testing indicators is more than twice that of foreign countries. In terms of pollutants, mycotoxins, microbial limits and other indicators, Chinese standards are stricter than foreign countries.
"The national standard is the quality bottom line set for all dairy companies, and the high-quality development of the dairy industry requires enterprises to improve the upper limit of product quality." Zhang Yaoguang said that each factory under Junlebao has an independent inspection center, and the group has a central laboratory, and products need to be sent for inspection layer by layer. Between more than 20 factories, mutual inspections are also carried out from time to time. Generally speaking, from raw materials to finished products, there are more than 520 testing items in the whole process of a can of milk powder, and it takes 7 days to complete the test.
At the Banner Dairy milk powder factory, the ultra-high performance liquid chromatograph used by quality inspector Tian Xiaopei has an accuracy of more than one part per trillion. She told reporters that all detection information will be fed into the big data platform, and the whole process can be traced by scanning the QR code on the can.
This is a commitment backed by world-class certification standards.
Lu Manhui, deputy director of the technical center of the group's quality management center, goes to "greet" thousands of zebrafish in dozens of fish tanks every day. The moment the lights are turned on, colorful small fish swim abruptly, stirring up a tank of lights.
Zebrafish are known as "water mice", because their pathogenic genes are as similar to humans as high as 84%, which can be used for early warning of food safety risks. In February 2018, Junlebao was awarded the "Green Fish Medal" representing the highest safety rating in the sampling of infant milk powder sold in the Hong Kong market by the third-party testing organization "Vitargent", which began to understand and introduce this method into daily testing. Unlike other tests, which focus on known toxins, biological tests for fish embryos can detect thousands of potentially toxic substances and their mixing to produce a "cocktail effect," Lu said.
Just as climbers are always looking for higher peaks, Junlebao constantly challenges higher standards to force quality improvement. The "Wall of Honor" of Junlebao headquarters is full of displays such as the nomination award of China Quality Award, the special gold medal of the World Food Quality Evaluation Conference, and the International Quality Management Excellence and Innovation Diamond Award. Among them, the EU global food safety standard BRC and the international food safety standard IFS double certification are the two highest gold certifications in the international market.
In September 2014, soon after the launch of Junlebao infant formula, it obtained the global food safety standard BRC "Class A" certification. Immediately afterwards, Junlebao launched an attack on the "A+ level" certification.
"To get from A to A+, you need to pass a flight check. As long as the standard is not met once, the A-level certification will also be canceled, which can be described as 'one loss'. Zhang Feng, manager of the quality management department of Banner Dairy, has received several flight inspections and is still "sweating nervously" when I think about it. I don't know when, the inspection expert will suddenly "land" at the factory gate and reach the production line within 30 minutes. "Valves, material pumps, seals in pipelines, everything that can be removed must be removed. If there is a towel in the workshop, the towel must also pass the test. ”
In July 2015, Junlebao became the first milk powder manufacturer in the world to pass BRC "A+ grade" certification. This was evaluated by the industry as the "Olympic gold medal of domestic milk powder brand". Since then, Junlebao has undergone a flight inspection once a year and has maintained a 100% pass rate.
"The strictest standards, the strictest supervision, the most severe penalties, the most serious accountability", which is prominently printed on the four three-dimensional milk tanks in the banner dairy plant. The "four strictest" food safety that General Secretary Xi Jinping once again emphasized during his inspection of the banner dairy industry has been implemented in the regulatory practice of China's dairy industry.
Infant formula is your child's ration. As the only country in the world to implement the formula milk powder registration system, the mainland implements the strictest regulatory standards in the world. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the mainland has successively issued the "Measures for the Administration of Formula Registration of Infant Formula Milk Powder Products" and the "Action Plan for the Upgrading of Domestic Infant Formula Milk Powder", raising the threshold for license access, clearly standardizing the production of formula milk powder with drug management standards, and becoming more and more stringent in terms of raw materials, processes and processes.
The strictest regulation achieves the best level of safety in history. The sampling results of the State Administration for Market Regulation show that the pass rate of mainland dairy products in 2021 is 99.87%; The pass rate of infant formula sampling inspection was 99.88%. The pass rate of sampling of prohibited additives such as melamine in infant formula continued to maintain 100%.
Junlebao Dairy Group Dairy Innovation Research Institute. (Profile photo)
"Planted" safety of the whole industry chain
In late autumn, in the golden milk source belt of 41 degrees north latitude, Junlebao's own pasture, the endless oat grass swaying in the wind, and the grouting period can be harvested as soon as it is over.
Five years ago, at Banner Dairy, General Secretary Xi Jinping inspected the automatic production line, central control room, filling production line and automatic storage system, and affirmed the company's implementation of "planting, breeding and zero-distance integration" to ensure the optimization of quality and safety.
Factories are built in pastures, and pastures are built on grasslands. "Zero distance" comes from the integrated design of farm and factory.
Milking time, overlooking the Flag Dairy milking hall from above, is quite spectacular. In the country's largest milking hall, there are six 80-position automatic milking machines that can milk 480 cows at the same time. There is not a single milk truck in the huge factory area, and the raw milk directly enters the 170-meter-long low-temperature clean pipe above the intelligent milking tray and is transported to the processing link within two hours.
"Active substances such as lactoferrin will decrease rapidly after two hours, so the dairy industry has a 'golden 2 hours'." Zhong Yan, vice president of the group, picked up a can of milk powder and pointed to the reporter the milking date and production date marked at the bottom of the can, and "zero distance" ensured the freshness of the raw milk.
Self-built pastures and self-controlled milk sources are the whole industry link lines selected by Junlebao from the beginning of making milk powder. "At that time, we bought a small ranch and hired a doctor to renovate the ranch while raising cattle." Hou Xinfeng, vice president of the group and general manager of the animal husbandry business department, said that at present, all infant milk powder of Junlebao has achieved 100% of its own milk source.
Self-built farms are a typical asset-heavy model. Hou Xinfeng told reporters: In recent years, Junlebao has built 17 large-scale pastures, with more than 130,000 cows and a total investment of 7.7 billion yuan. A ranch takes at least 5 years to break even. In addition, "the family has ten thousand consistent, with hair is not counted", uncontrollable factors such as diseases, dynamic impairment of biological assets, for dairy processing enterprises, cross-border to the primary industry to engage in animal husbandry, can be described as interlaced like a mountain.
Until today, almost all foreign milk powder enterprises purchase milk for processing; However, in the mainland, after the melamine incident, the whole industry has enhanced its understanding of the importance of controllable milk quality, and some large enterprises have taken the initiative to choose the "uneconomical" approach of self-built pastures and even grasslands, forming an integrated technical route of the whole industrial chain from pasture planting, dairy breeding to production and processing.
"Milk safety is the lifeblood of dairy enterprises. To sleep peacefully, the whole industry chain is a weight that must be beared. Wei Lihua said.
A constant temperature cow house with a water curtain and a fan on the other, a fully mixed diet customized by a private chef, a smart collar that detects the physical condition of cows at any time... The small farm that was originally acquired has now become a model for high-quality and productive farming.
On the display outside the milking hall of Youzhi Farm, real-time data is scrolling: fat 4.0%, protein 3.45%... Open the "Digital Ranch" APP, and Xu Ying, the head of Youzhi Ranch, can monitor the milk production and health status of each cow at any time.
Standing at the strategic height of overall development and safety, it is of extraordinary significance to achieve the goal of "milk supply rate of more than 70%" by 2025, firmly hold the milk bottle in your own hands, and improve the independent controllability of the whole dairy industry chain.
Junlebao constantly traces its origins and looks for the upstream of the development logic of the industry.
- The upper reaches of the pasture are forage.
In the summer of 2017, Yu Wenhua, the Group's director of milk powder research and development, tasted the forage in the pasture. "Each feed tastes different." She says "tasting herbs" is to improve the flavor of milk produced on a pasture. There are some slight differences in the flavor of the two milks, and it is important to find out which food is causing this difference. Select two or three feeds that may cause differences, and then repeatedly compare the cattle in the columns, and replace the wet alfalfa with dry alfalfa, "the grassy smell is gone, and the milk smell is more mellow."
The group currently has 500,000 mu of pasture planting base. Thanks to the original ecological water and soil nourishment, the quality of the grass planted by Junlebao has reached the first-class grass standard or above. The scientific research team specializing in forage research carries out scientific research in the aspects of variety improvement, harvesting and storage, constantly optimizes forage varieties, and accurately locks the golden time for forage harvesting.
- Upstream of the forage is the soil.
In the laboratory of the Group's quality management center, Su Yuncong is "sifting soil". "In the same area, some plots grow tall and dense pasture, others grow sparsely, and the secret is hidden in the soil." In order to find the most suitable plots for grass planting and grow high-quality and pollution-free pasture, Su Yuncong's scientific research team screened all organic plots and low-potassium plots of the group by detecting pollutants, organic matter, pH value, etc. in soil samples of different plots.
- Upstream of breeding is breeding.
Breeding cattle are the "chips" of the dairy industry. In order to solve the bottlenecks such as the high dependence on imports of high-quality seed sources and the hindrance of the efficient expansion of high-quality dairy cows, Junlebao established Hebei Pinyuan Biotechnology Co., Ltd. last year, and its embryo laboratory with an annual capacity of 50,000 pieces has been put into use. On September 5 this year, during the 13th China Dairy Conference, Pinyuan Biotech held an event to name six breeding bulls. "We plan to invest 300 million yuan per year in 2 to 3 years to build a national dairy core breeding farm and high-yield dairy cow expansion base in China, and strive to breed our own excellent breeding bulls in 3 to 5 years." Hou Xinfeng said.
From the beginning of raising cattle and planting grass, time seems to slow down. Wei Lihua often came to the pasture to listen to the sound of grass growing. "We're more like growing grass now." Being a company and a brand is like planting, you need to sow the seeds of trust, take good care of it, and wait for time to turn sweat into harvest.
Guarding the safety of the entire industrial chain from the source, China's dairy industry is undergoing gratifying changes. According to the data of radiation ranch of the national dairy industry technology system, the milk fat rate and milk protein rate of raw milk in mainland China have steadily increased, with the average values approaching 3.9% and exceeding 3.2% respectively in 2021, and the number of colonies and somatic cells per milliliter has decreased significantly. Liu Changquan said that the continuous improvement of the quality of raw milk has become an important foundation and guarantee for the quality improvement of China's dairy products.
Answer the question of "is it good or not" with innovation
Entering the stage of high-quality development, the market has shifted from "whether there is any" to "whether it is good or not". After years of efforts, the development of dairy enterprises has shifted from product-driven and brand-driven to technology-driven. Wei Lihua said, "Junlebao now wants to build a technology-based dairy enterprise."
In the 90s of last century, the widespread application of ultra-high temperature sterilization technology, room temperature milk broke through the transportation limitations by long shelf life, and some enterprises seized the opportunity thus achieved cross-regional development and grew into national dairy enterprises. With the new round of consumption upgrades, low-temperature milk that retains more active substances and "milk taste" has become a hot track. While the "300km radius" argument is still valid, dairy companies have explored different technical routes to strike a balance between freshness and shelf life.
"0.09 seconds, give the milk a steam bath." Kang Zhiyuan, R&D Director of the Group's R&D Management Center, described the INF steam immersion sterilization process: naturally dripping milk, passed through the pipe instantly under pressure, and then quickly cooled.
Junlebao, who started with low-temperature yogurt, naturally had the original idea of subtracting from the temperature control that he was good at, but he still encountered a ceiling with a shelf life of 7 days. "If the sterilization time is short enough, won't it also reduce the heat damage?" After countless failures, the idea suddenly hit Wei Lihua.
This is followed by countless permutations of time, temperature and even the radius of the sterilization pipe. The convergence of R&D teams in various fields to tackle key problems, thousands of back-and-forth tests and tests, and a large amount of investment that has not been interrupted when you can't see the direction... The final freeze is at 0.09 seconds, and the heated negative product furoline is controlled below 12 mg/100 g protein, while the active substance survives for 19 days. Junlebao is expected to achieve two "greedy" goals at the same time: not only to enter the "fresh" track, but also to shape a high-end brand image; It also broke through the sales radius and opened up the national market.
0.09 seconds, is the quenching of a drop of milk. 3 years, is the tempering of nearly 100 scientific researchers.
The equipment manufacturer is in Shanghai, while the testing agency is in Beijing. For each experiment, researchers have to rush from Shijiazhuang to the pasture in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province in the morning to pick up fresh milk, carry the incubator to Shanghai by high-speed train to do the test, and then fly the finished product to the scientific research institute in Beijing for testing. "Once, due to a delayed flight, I arrived in Beijing in the middle of the night, and the hotel room I booked was canceled. Watching the dawn rise in the street has always been etched in my memory. Yao Huan, fresh milk R&D department of the Group's R&D management center, was impressed by the test and testing.
Close to the market, guided by consumer demand, one cool "black technology" attracts people's attention; Facing the future, focusing on industrial commonality and key technologies, we will carry out basic research on "sitting on the cold bench" in the fields of embryo breeding, breast milk research, and strain development.
Lactobacillus paracasei N1115, which has independent intellectual property rights, is named after the number of tests in the research and development process.
In 2006, as one of the first masters introduced by Junlebao, Wang Shijie, chief engineer of the Group's Nutrition Research Institute, was mainly tasked with strain development. At that time, flavoring agents and starter cultures for the production of yogurt had to be imported from abroad, and lactic acid bacteria were monopolized by a few foreign companies. On the one hand, due to the lack of own strains, the homogeneity of products in the domestic market is serious; On the other hand, the valuable bacterial resources in traditional foods in various places will gradually disappear if they are not collected in time. "It's a big risk!" Wang Shijie said that people in the industry have a strong sense of urgency.
Wang Shijie completed his postdoctoral studies with the funding of the group, and his research on strains has never stopped. "Cultures exist objectively and need to be discovered; And its functions and applications need to invest time to discover. Wang Shijie and his team traveled to Tibet, Inner Mongolia and other places to collect strains, and screened and tested them one by one. Finally, Lactobacillus paracasei N1115 was screened and isolated from yogurt fermented by traditional methods by herders.
Junlebao has established a culture resource bank containing thousands of lactic acid bacteria. Among them, more than 30 plants have obtained patent deposits, and 9 plants are used in products. Wang Shijie said that the efforts of domestic counterparts to explore their own strains have not been interrupted and have begun to bear fruit. The condition of human restraint is changing.
In the Dairy Innovation Institute's basic research lab, a row of giant freezers with a temperature control of minus 80 degrees Celsius holds samples of breast milk collected from all over the country.
"Breast milk is the 'gold standard' in infant formula design, and all formulas are the greatest imitation and tribute to breast milk. However, human understanding of breast milk is still very limited. Ling Junjian, Director of the Group's Innovation Center, said that their work supports the precise development of human emulsification of infant formula through the analysis and detection of important active ingredients in human milk samples, such as lactoferrin, osteopontin and human milk oligosaccharides.
At present, Junlebao has built 9 scientific research platforms, including the National Dairy Professional R&D Technology Sub-center and the Hebei Dairy Industry Technology Research Institute, and undertaken 63 longitudinal scientific research projects such as national key R&D projects; It has obtained 213 patents and completed 51 scientific and technological achievements. The Group's technology center was recognized as the "National Dairy Processing Technology R&D Sub-center", and the central laboratory was accredited by the national laboratory.
Innovation requires fault tolerance.
Chang Pengfei, the milk powder product R&D headquarters of the Group's R&D management center, remembers that when developing an organic infant milk powder formula, in order to add more lactoferrin, after hundreds of small and pilot tests, it entered the big test, and the result was three consecutive failures. The ratio of raw materials, the pH range, and the adjustment of any kind of variable may affect the effect of the finished product. "If a big test fails, millions of dollars are gone. But the R&D team will not be blamed. Continue to dry until successful. ”
Innovation needs to keep up with the market.
As a consumer enterprise that has been in the highly competitive dairy market for many years, Junlebao needs to maintain a strong grasp of consumer demand.
Any food is hard to mix. But in the flavor research room, the "electronic nose" that looks like a trumpet flower can "smell" thousands of different smells and "paint" the flavor. "These two lines show the similarity and deviation of the smells of the two samples," Ma Rui, deputy director of consumer research at the group, pointed to an electrocardiogram-like map, saying that they are building a simulated consumer home scene, in which there are a large number of black technologies such as "electronic nose", "electronic tongue" and "eye tracker" to better understand consumer preferences.
Open the "second curve" of high-quality development
In 2021, the Junlebao Innovation Research Institute, which invested hundreds of millions of yuan, was put into use. The institute is built on the mountain, shaped like a giant ship about to sail; The R&D center and the quality center are located on both sides of the research institute. Wei Lihua said: "High-quality development is a reshaping and reengineering, and we must build a smart brain that supports future development. ”
Junlebao's past growth logic can be described as the right time and place. The vigorous growth of the Chinese market has given sufficient returns to industrial enterprises. Starting with three small bungalows when it started in 1995, Junlebao ran the first half of the marathon almost at a sprint speed. Since 2013, the Group's sales have grown at an average annual compound growth rate of 26%, and it has become a comprehensive dairy enterprise with an annual revenue of more than 20 billion yuan and its main business covers all fields of the dairy industry.
Not long ago, Junlebao Group announced a new target: by 2025, the group's sales will more than double. In other words, with an average annual compound growth rate of nearly 30%, it will take 3 years to create another Junlebao.
This is not destined to be a "small goal" that can be easily achieved.
How to open the second curve of enterprise development? It is necessary to make simultaneous efforts for connotative growth and extension expansion.
The motivation comes from everyone's participation in the "evolution of quality".
"Only by promoting the transformation of enterprises from focusing on the 'small quality' of products to 'big quality' focusing on operation; the quality department manages the quality and transforms it to 'everyone bears the quality improvement', can we truly realize the total quality management of the entire industry chain." Huang Yafang, vice president of the group and general manager of the production and operation center, said that the driving force of innovation comes from everyone's participation. "Whoever is responsible for specific work is the one who sets the work standards."
There is a convention in the powder processing section of milk powder production: the same batch of milk powder should be dry mixed with auxiliary materials at a weight of not less than 500 kg; Less than 500 kg, it has to be manually "cleaned" as "waste powder" to ensure accurate measurement of the next feed. It is time-consuming and laborious, and it is also extremely wasteful. One day, Zhao Kaifei, a milling engineer at Banner Dairy, put forward a bold idea: Can we simply omit this link?
Try it many times, spill the powder on the ground each time, and rework it, which increases the workload and material consumption. Zhao Kaifei was a little frustrated after many setbacks, but with everyone's encouragement, he insisted on repeated debugging until the problem was solved by adding a pre-weighing link. The new production line operating system was launched, transformed according to Zhao Kaifei's plan, and written into the "Post Operation Manual" that was constantly updated by man.
"Everyone is willing to innovate, everyone can innovate, today has become an important aspect of Junlebao's corporate culture, and it is also one of the important experiences that support Junlebao from childhood to adulthood." Wang Shiwei, senior vice president of the group, said.
The driving force comes from the synergy of the whole industry chain.
In July 2022, the General Office of the Hebei Provincial Government issued the Notice on Further Strengthening the Support Policies for the Revitalization of the Dairy Industry, proposing a series of measures to further accelerate the development of the dairy seed industry and improve the construction level of the milk source base on the basis of the Outline of the Dairy Industry Revitalization Plan of Hebei Province (2019-2025) and the Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Revitalization of the Dairy Industry.
The development of family farms is not only a carrier to improve the quality of milk sources, but also a starting point for rural revitalization. In 2019, according to the "six unifications" of farm design, dairy procurement, feed formula and technical services, Junlebao built the first family farm in Xingtai, Hebei Province, with a cow yield of more than 10 tons.
Last year, Junlebao built more than 10 such family farms in Hebei. They proposed that hundreds of family ranches would be built in the province in the next five years. "The dairy cow population in Hebei Province is about 1.35 million. If the average production capacity per cow is increased from 8 tons to 10 tons, the annual income can be increased by about 8,000 yuan. Hou Xinfeng said.
The power comes from the same frequency resonance with consumption upgrades.
Dairy analyst Song Liang believes that mainland dairy has entered a new stage of quality upgrading and innovative development, and the increase in the market will come more from innovation-driven high-quality development. Milk powder enterprises must adapt to the trend of consumption upgrading, improve traditional consumption, cultivate new consumption, and form a higher level of dynamic balance between demand driving supply and supply creating demand.
"There is no blue ocean or red ocean in the market, only a switch between the two - as the number of entrants increases and competition intensifies, the original blue ocean becomes a red ocean; Through subdivision and innovation, a new blue ocean can also be found in the Red Sea. Wei Lihua said that the mainland has a strong advantage in population resources and has great potential for domestic consumer demand. The pain points in consumption can become the direction of industrial quality upgrading.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that high-quality development is the primary task of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. We believe that bearing in mind General Secretary Xi Jinping's instruction to 'make the dairy industry stronger and better', the best dairy products in the future must be in China, and the best dairy enterprises must be in China. Wei Lihua said. (Economic Daily reporter Qi Ping, Wang Shengqiang, Zhu Wei, Zhang Weihang)