Telunsu "overturned", reflecting the predicament of Mengniu

Written by: Planets

Source: Bedo Finance

Recently, a consumer surnamed Hui from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province complained that he bought a carton of Mengniu Trensu milk for his son, but after the child drank it, he found that the milk had a strange smell, and there was a rash on his body, suspected of allergic symptoms.

According to Mr. Hui, this box of Trensu milk is room temperature milk with a shelf life of 6 months, the production date is September 18, 2023, it has not expired, and it was purchased through regular channels.

After the incident, Mr. Hui called the Mengniu 400 customer service hotline, and the other party responded that he could compensate for a carton of milk, but he did not accept the compensation plan. Subsequently, a person familiar with the matter said that the local market supervision and management department intervened in the investigation, and finally Mengniu gave compensation and obtained Mr. Hui's understanding.

It is worth mentioning that this situation is not unique.

1. Deterioration occurs from time to time, and qualified testing is not a market pass

Bedo Finance found that there have been consumer complaints about Trensu pure milk due to spoilage within the shelf life. On June 6, 2023, a netizen from Nanyang, Henan Province said that the Terensu pure milk he purchased had become "tofu dregs", and the customer service of Telunsu responded that it may have been caused by bumps in transportation.

In addition, there are not a few consumer complaints with "Terensu deterioration" as the keyword on the black cat complaint platform, and there are even merchants who admit to deterioration, but refuse to compensate consumers on the grounds that the product has passed the qualified test and does not violate the food safety law. Currently, the progress of the event shows "The brand has replied".

Some netizens posted on the "What's Worth Buying" community that the Trensu milk they bought at Tmall Supermarket on April 20, 2023 had deteriorated, but the Mengniu complaint hotline replied that the milk had a corresponding qualified test report, and said that "the food safety law does not apply to Mengniu" and could not meet consumers' compensation requirements.

It should be pointed out that Article 148 of the Food Safety Law clearly stipulates that if a consumer suffers damage due to food that does not meet food safety standards, he may claim compensation from the operator or the producer, and may also claim compensation for the loss of ten times the price or three times the loss.

In addition, producers and operators who receive consumer compensation requests shall implement a first-bear responsibility system, pay compensation in advance, and shall not pass the buck; If it is the responsibility of the producer, the operator has the right to recover from the producer after compensation; If it is the responsibility of the operator, the producer has the right to recover from the operator after compensation.

In other words, the claim that "the food safety law does not apply to Mengniu" by the customer service of the Mengniu complaint hotline and the refusal of the merchant to compensate consumers on the grounds that "the milk has passed the food safety inspection and does not violate the food safety law" are groundless.

Mengniu Public Relations also said in response to Mr. Hui's complaint that the source of production is liquid cryopreservation, and the spoiled milk may be caused by improper storage by supermarkets and consumers, or by swollen bags in the transportation process, and if such a situation occurs, as long as it is within a reasonable range, Mengniu will compensate in accordance with the Consumer Rights Protection Law.

Second, it has been repeatedly detained by the customs, and the quality of imported milk is also worried

Just before it was revealed that Trensu had deteriorated within the shelf life, causing consumers to have allergic symptoms, the General Administration of Customs announced the "National Information on Unallowed Food for September 2023", in which Trensu Global Selected Pure Milk from New Zealand was impressively listed.

According to the announcement, 5,234 kilograms of New Zealand Trensu Global Selected Pure Milk produced by Miraka Limited and imported by Tianjin Tongrui Supply Chain Co., Ltd. were found to be unqualified in safety and health and other items in the port supervision process, and were finally not allowed to enter the country due to "filth and corruption".

Customs officials explained that "filth and corruption" generally refers to the sensory discovery of damaged packaging, leakage, smell of sour, smelly smell, the cause may be the appearance of non-raw material impurities in the product, or in the process of production, transportation due to packaging damage, insufficient cold chain and other reasons, it is not excluded that the product has been "dirty and corrupt" before shipment.

According to the information released by the General Administration of Customs, all the food products listed in the announcement have been returned or destroyed at the port in accordance with the law.

According to public information, Miraka Limited is a New Zealand dairy company that began cooperation with Mengniu in November 2014 in the field of milk source and dairy processing, and the importer Tianjin Tongrui Supply Chain Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Mengniu with 100% indirect shares, and its main business is to sell raw materials.

In fact, as early as January 2016, two batches of Trensu Global Select Milk supplied by Miraka Limited were destroyed in accordance with the law due to "substandard packaging" of two batches of products, with a total weight of 36.9 kg, and another batch of Trensu Global Select Milk (organic) from Denmark with a total weight of 8.416 kg was destroyed for the same reason.

What is the market performance of this Trensu Global Selected Pure Milk that has been repeatedly "detained" by the customs? After communicating with the customer service of the Telunsu flagship store of major e-commerce platforms, Bedo Finance learned that it is not currently selling this product, so it has not set up the corresponding product link, and has not received a notice on whether it will be listed in the future.

At present, the sale of Trensu Global Selected Pure Milk is mainly in individual stores, and the difference in sales and sales prices is large. One of the products, which claims to have a production date of July 2023 and a shelf life until May 2024, is priced at 79 yuan per box (250mL*12 boxes), with an average price of about 6.58 yuan per box.

Third, to create a high-end precedent, can not get around the difficulty of profit

Telunsu was hatched from China Mengniu Dairy Co., Ltd. (02319.HK). HK), born in 2005, under the name of "gold medal milk" in Mongolian, has created high-end dairy categories such as "Telunsu Pure Milk" and "Telunsu Organic Milk" through subdivided product lines, which has opened the prelude to the competition in the high-end milk track of China's dairy industry.

"Not all milk is called Trensu", along with this advertising slogan, Trensu quickly occupied the market head of high-end room temperature milk. In 2021, Mengniu's total revenue will be 88.14 billion yuan, of which Telunsu's revenue will exceed 30 billion yuan for the first time, a year-on-year increase of about 33%, making Telunsu the largest single product in the global dairy industry.

According to the 2023 interim report, Mengniu achieved revenue of 51.119 billion yuan in the first half of 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7.12%. Among them, liquid milk achieved revenue of 41.54 billion yuan, accounting for 81.5% of the company's total revenue, which is the cornerstone of Mengniu's performance supporting Mengniu's revenue of 10 billion yuan.

Mengniu said in the financial report that it focuses on the field of liquid milk at room temperature, continues to make efforts in product upgrading and innovation, brand communication and consumer interaction, and drives Telunsu to expand its leading position in the market share of high-end milk through the "desert organic, it is better organic" Tronsu desert organic milk, and maintains the first place in the organic pure milk segment.

While the performance continues to rise, Mengniu's profitability is "standing still", and even declining, with a net profit of 3.059 billion yuan in the first half of 2023, down 16.03% from 3.643 billion yuan in the same period of 2022; Total comprehensive income was RMB2,895 million, down 12.72% from RMB3,317 million in the same period of 2022.

Bedo Finance found that Mengniu's display space cost has increased, from 1.641 billion yuan in the first half of 2022 to 1.815 billion yuan in the same period of 2023, an increase of 10.57%. In addition, Mengniu's sales expenses also increased to 13.906 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.4%.

However, when the display cost is implemented in specific offline stores, it is inevitable that the price game between the product supplier and the supermarket retailer will be related to the distribution of benefits. Previously, it was reported by the media that because the sales agreement with Wumart Group in North China on room temperature milk has not been negotiated for the time being, Mengniu room temperature milk represented by Telunsu has been withdrawn from the shelves of Wumart for more than half a year.

It is not difficult to see that reducing costs and increasing efficiency has become an important means for Mengniu to seek profit growth space in the bottleneck of "increasing income without increasing profits", and whale staff data shows that the room temperature milk market on the Jingdong platform has been declining for 5 consecutive months, and June, which should have taken the "big promotion" express, is even the month with the largest sales decline in the first half of 2023.

But no matter how the market changes, food safety is always the foundation of a dairy company. At the moment when the room temperature milk track is calm, the high-end room temperature milk represented by Mengniu Trensu should not only resonate with the times in terms of sales and channel delivery, but also grasp its original intention of "green production model".