On April 12, the 13th China Liquor T9 Summit, hosted by the China Liquor Industry Association and hosted by Shanxi Xinghuacun Fenjiu Group, was held in Taiyuan, Shanxi. The main persons in charge of 9 leading liquor enterprises including Wuliangye gathered together to conduct exchanges and dialogues with the theme of "Building Confidence, Consolidating the Origin, and Improving Value", and sought the high-quality development of China's liquor industry.
At the summit, Zeng Congqin, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Wuliangye Group (Co., Ltd.), delivered a speech entitled "Leading the Liquor Industry Through the Cycle with Long-term Value", explaining the way to break through the cycle from the aspects of industry trends, growth opportunities, and value creation.
From Zeng Congqin's speech, it can be understood that although the current liquor is still in a long cycle characterized by structural prosperity, the development of Wuliangye has a foundation, support and confidence.
Talking about the industry: adjustment is a phased form, and growth is a long-term trend
The past 2023 is a year of change, transformation and differentiation in the long-term development of China's wine industry. Judging from the data of the industry, the characteristics of the long-term cycle of the liquor industry are very obvious, although the overall revenue and profit of the liquor are growing, but the long-term accumulation of internal and external contradictions has broken through the critical point.
It is based on the macroeconomic and industry situation that Zeng Congqin believes that cyclical contradictions, structural contradictions, and aggregate demand contradictions are intertwined, the industrial pattern has undergone profound changes, accelerated evolution, and the trend of strong concentration, strong differentiation, and strong extrusion has become more obvious, and industrial adjustment has entered the deep water area. However, looking at Chinese liquor from the historical timeline, adjustment is a phased form, and growth is a long-term trend.
"In the past 20 years, the liquor industry has experienced 8 consecutive increases in output from 2004 to 2012, and 7 consecutive declines in output since 2016, but it has been in a steady development growth channel, with an average annual compound growth rate of 13% and 20% in sales revenue and total profit respectively, and the long-term industry attributes are very obvious. Zeng Congqin said, "Confidence comes from the industry itself, the underlying logic of China's liquor development has not changed, the market demand has not changed, and the creative expression of a better life has not changed. ”
In Zeng Congqin's view, the more long-cycle the industry is, the more it must adhere to long-term value, which is the key to breaking the situation and solving the problem through the industry cycle and ironing out short-term fluctuations. From the perspective of the essential attributes of the liquor industry, the starting point and foothold of long-term value doctrine is to continue to meet the people's demand for a better life, and to find and discover deterministic growth opportunities in providing more and better choices for people's high-quality life.
For Wuliangye, despite the uncertainties in the macro environment, Wuliangye has still achieved double-digit steady revenue growth in the past many years. In 2024, under the general trend of economic recovery, with the further differentiation of the industry, a new era characterized by brand leadership, quality leadership, and production area leadership has emerged.
Talking about growth: there are five "growth opportunities" in the industry to transform confidence and confidence into strategic determination
In the period of industry adjustment, restarting growth has become the main theme of the liquor industry. So, what are the "growth opportunities" for the liquor industry? Zeng Congqin believes that in providing more and better choices for people's high-quality life, liquor companies should find growth opportunities from five aspects.
First, it is necessary to find growth opportunities from the upgrading of quality consumption. The market demand for fine wines continues to grow, and the mid-to-high-end market still enjoys expansion opportunities.
Second, it is necessary to find growth opportunities from the change of core groups. The main consumer groups of liquor show obvious characteristics of intergenerational alternation, with people aged 30-40 gradually becoming the main consumers of liquor, accounting for 34%, and "post-95" newcomers in the workplace accounting for 18%.
The third is to identify growth opportunities from the evolution of drinking preferences. The consumer group of buying new and drinking aged wine has gradually expanded, and the transaction scale of the old wine market has exceeded 100 billion yuan, and it is expected to exceed 150 billion yuan in the next five years, becoming a market segment with great development potential.
Fourth, it is necessary to find growth opportunities from the expansion of market boundaries. Since last year, T9 liquor companies have frequently led teams to go to sea, throwing stones to ask for directions, leading Chinese liquor to go global.
Fifth, it is necessary to find growth opportunities from industrial transformation and upgrading. Enterprises should focus on improving the high-end, intelligent, green and integrated development level of traditional manufacturing industry.
The liquor industry has learned that Wuliangye has done a lot of work around the five major opportunities: in the quality upgrade, it adheres to the quality policy of "collecting the essence of five grains, keeping a hundred years of ingenuity, seeking perfect brewing, and forever establishing a quality benchmark", and builds a whole life cycle quality control system of "from a seed to a drop of fine wine"; Fall in love with liquor; in satisfying drinking preferences, deeply cultivate the aged liquor market, promote it from the collector's cabinet to the consumer's table, and bring more flavor and fragrance to the life of harmony; in breaking the market boundary, actively "go global", accelerate the formulation of international standards for Chinese liquor, and strive to break the situation in the development of the international liquor market; in the process of industrial transformation and upgrading, Wuliangye promotes industrial transformation and upgrading.
Obviously, in the face of a series of structural growth opportunities in the liquor industry, Wuliangye will transform its confidence and confidence into its strategic determination to face difficulties, and transform its foundation and advantages into the wisdom to take advantage of the situation, which will further drive the steady growth of the scale of the liquor industry and the continuous improvement of efficiency.
Talking about value: focusing on the five major value creation to promote the industry "upward", "excellent" and "green"
In addition to the development trend of the industry and the five "growth opportunities" of the industry, Zeng Congqin also mentioned that it is necessary to carry out five "value creation" actions, continue to promote the development of the liquor industry in the direction of "upward", "excellent" and "green", continue to shape and give birth to new development momentum, promote the value center of the entire industry to move upward, and lead the industry through the cycle.
Among them, the creation of the "five values" actions are: focusing on scientific and technological innovation to carry out value creation, focusing on quality value enhancement, focusing on intelligent transformation and digital transformation to carry out value creation, focusing on industrial value upgrading, focusing on market layout to carry out value creation, focusing on promoting consumption value reactivation, focusing on green transformation to carry out value creation, focusing on ecological value re-manifestation, focusing on integration and co-creation to carry out value creation, and focusing on promoting the re-amplification of the value of production areas.
And this is what Wuliangye has been doing.
In terms of scientific and technological innovation, Wuliangye adheres to the guidance of the platform, focuses on scientific and technological research, deepens production, education and research, and always insists on seeking new development in integrity and seeking new breakthroughs in innovation. Among them, in terms of platform construction, it has built a scientific and technological innovation platform system with the national enterprise technology center as the overall control, and built 7 national innovation platforms and 6 provincial and ministerial innovation platforms; in terms of scientific and technological research, aiming at the core bottleneck problems of scientific and technological frontier research in the field of liquor brewing, it has actively participated in and co-created a number of scientific research projects with international influence; in terms of production, education, research and application, it has promoted joint research on brewing mechanism and dynamic flavor perception analysis with universities such as Jiangnan University, Beijing Technology and Business University, Sichuan University of Light Chemical Industry, etc. Scientific and technological innovation also escorts the quality of Wuliangye products.
In terms of intelligent transformation and digital transformation, Wuliangye is focusing on promoting the joint construction of standards for intelligent transformation and digital transformation in the wine industry, promoting the co-creation of intelligent transformation and digital transformation models in the wine industry, and promoting the sharing of experience in intelligent transformation and digital transformation in the wine industry, so as to continuously shape new momentum and new advantages for development.
In terms of market layout, Wuliangye is continuously optimizing its product layout, coordinating the domestic and international markets, focusing on intergenerational wine, cellar wine, low-alcohol wine, vintage wine, cultural wine, etc., to further promote the supply-side structural reform with wine body innovation and process innovation as the core, and strengthen the cultivation of young consumer groups and the expansion of domestic and international markets.
In terms of green transformation, Wuliangye has always focused on the sustainable development of society, with the goal of creating a "zero-carbon wine enterprise", promoting green energy and low-carbon resources, and protecting the earth with the green concept of "harmony and beauty".
In terms of integration and co-creation, Wuliangye is taking the lead in protecting, constructing, and promoting the production area, focusing on highlighting the beauty of ecology, quality, culture, integration, and development of the production area, and continuing to contribute the wisdom and strength of famous liquor to the high-quality development of the production area.
Integrating its own development into the industry, into the production area, and into the modernization construction, Wuliangye is leading China's liquor industry through the cycle and striding forward.
Some people in the industry believe that Zeng Congqin's speech directly cut to the "main points" of the industry, with height and depth, pointing out the direction and establishing confidence for the development of the industry. "From Zeng Dong's speech, we can also get a glimpse of the new path of Wuliangye's high-quality development, and believe that Wuliangye will bravely undertake the mission in the times and the situation, continue to expand the development space in stability and progress, and accelerate the construction of a world-class wine enterprise. ”