On April 23, 2024, Yili released the "Yili China Athletes' Customized PET Bottled Pure Milk" through its official WeChat, and emphasized the words "Yili's first PET bottled pure milk" in the blog post and on the poster.
Image source: Yili official WeChat
In the domestic dairy industry, yogurt and milk beverage packaging forms are diverse, but pure milk is more commonly paper-based packaging, glass bottles and aseptic plastic bags, and PET pure milk products are concentrated in a few high-end dairy products.
For example, in China, on May 10, 2022, when "Adopt a Cow" launched "Refrigerated Jersey Milk", PET bottle packaging was used.
Image Credit: Adopt a cow
Image source: Tmall-Daily Xianyu flagship store
Coincidentally, Mengniu's high-end fresh milk brand "Daily Xianyu" also uses PET bottles for the same "Jersey" milk.
What do these pure milk products have in common, and why do they all use PET bottles?
First, lighter than glass and more transparent than paper, PET bottles combine the dual advantages of practicality and marketing
The advantages on the surface of the PET bottle are clear: they are transparent, and the consumer can see what the milk looks like in the bottle from multiple angles. Adopt a cow and the pure milk of "purebred Jersey cow" highlighted by Daily Xianyu, and Yili's "3.2g milk protein" and "athlete preparation products" all highlight the quality in marketing.
It is not difficult to find that transparent packaging of milk brings consumers a more intuitive visual experience.
Newlant Pasteurized Milk, Image Credit: Tmall-Newlait Newland Flagship Store
In addition to the advantages of "making products more intuitive" brought by "transparency", PET bottles can be blown into a variety of shapes and sizes compared to cartons, bringing more packaging design possibilities, which opens up more space for improving product and brand awareness [1].
For example, the PET bottle can be a "big belly" like adopting a cow, or a "straight tube" like Yili. In terms of bottle mouth selection, PET bottles can use screw caps, pump caps, button caps, etc. When choosing a finish, you can use glossy, matte, or matte. These are all options that have the potential for PET bottles and are more difficult for paper-based packaging.
PET bottles, on the other hand, are lighter in weight than glass bottles, which are also transparent. Historically, glass bottles have been gradually replaced by paper packaging because glass is heavy and fragile [2], both of which are not the case with PET bottles.
Transparent packaging used to pose a problem: sunlight can cause photocatalytic degradation of vitamins A, B2, C, and D, which can lead to a decrease in the flavor and nutritional value of milk. Packaged milk may also develop an unpleasant odor due to the breakdown of sulfur-containing proteins. The more light that penetrates the packaging, the faster this degradation process will be [3].
Glass has a naturally low transmission to ultraviolet rays, while PET bottles have undergone a series of technological innovations to achieve a protective effect similar to that of glass bottles [4]. The advancement of industrial technology has made milk bottles more feasible, and has also given birth to more drinking scenarios for milk.
Jussara, a Brazilian milk brand, was one of the first companies to launch milk in PET bottles;
Yili said that "Yili China Athletes' Customized PET Bottled Pure Milk" is suitable for sports, outings, cycling and other scenarios. Lighter, more portable, not easy to break and leak, compared with cartons or glass bottles, the characteristics of PET bottles expand the scene of carrying and drinking milk.
The value of PET bottles for milk drinks is not only recently realised by companies. Since the beginning of this century, companies in Italy, the United States, Spain, France, Greece and Algeria have introduced Sidel's PET bottle milk filling lines for the production of pasteurized milk, UHT milk, yoghurt and other milk beverages [5].
What's more, PET bottles are also one of the most environmentally friendly packaging [6]. FBIF has described China's excellent PET bottle recycling results: China is currently striving for a 40% recycling rate for paper-based packaging, and the recycling rate of PET bottles in China has reached 94% during the same period [7].
Image source: Erie
For an enterprise like Yili, which has been rated as "No. 1 in the Social Responsibility Development Index of the Dairy Industry" by the "Blue Book of Corporate Social Responsibility" of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for six consecutive years, the more use of PET bottles is also more conducive to Yili's fulfillment of its environmental protection commitments.
Second, it is very important to seize the shelves! They have all worked the packaging
The many advantages of PET bottle performance may eventually help the product appear in more scenarios.
It is not difficult to understand that in the supermarket shelf area, all kinds of PET bottle beverages are much more common than glass bottles and cartons of milk. The reasons are varied, but not complicated:
On the one hand, the lightness and safety of PET bottles give it the confidence to stand on ordinary shelves. Cartons and glass bottles of milk, the packaging itself is relatively fragile, and some products are not suitable for the shelf.
On the other hand, when consumer needs and scenarios are different, the design potential of PET bottles provides more possibilities for choice.
Imagine the following scenarios: buying daily drinks for the whole family, children's drinks for children, buying impressive, fashionable drinks when traveling and dating, and drinking relatively business-sophisticated drinks in the company, consumers need to choose different types of packaging.
That's why yoghurt and milk drinks are packaged in PET bottles at an early stage. Yili's attempt to use PET bottles of pure milk has allowed pure milk to participate in the "sports, outing, cycling" and other scenarios of young users.
After the epidemic, offline supermarket channels have returned to brand vision, and more and more companies have attached importance to "shelf thinking". Dongpeng Special Drink, which will have an operating income of more than 10.3 billion yuan in 2023, has also experienced a "display revolution" in which packaging is gradually moving towards PET:
Before the launch of bottled packaging, Dongpeng Special Drink has been "crawling" in the energy drink track for more than 10 years, and has also tried packaging forms such as "boxed" and "canned......
...... The introduction of PET plastic bottles with dust caps, on the one hand, reduces product prices by controlling packaging costs, and at the same time makes them easy to store, and dust caps have also been "developed" by countless blue-collar people into ashtrays, sharing cups, etc., creating a cost-effective positioning [8].
Since then, Dongpeng has innovated the concept of large-capacity energy drinks through 500ml large bottles. Nielsen data shows that in 2023, Dongpeng Special Drink's 500ml bottled beverage has become the top 3 beverage SKU in the Chinese market in terms of sales amount [8].
PET bottle + large, eye-catching secret method;Image source: Dongpeng Special Drink
It's not just drinks. Jinzai Food, which once relied on small dried fish and quail eggs to achieve popularity, no longer only does bulk packaging, but has begun to seize the "shelf vision" through "large packaging", and establish a brand image in the quail eggs, a market segment that has not yet decided on the "trump card" [9].
Another quail egg brand, the "Egg Emperor" of Shiojin Shop, was also on display.
Unique packaging, unique shelves, image source: Shiojin Shop
"Snacks are busy" has directly made a super-large store, so that each product is literally "filled" with consumers' vision...... Maybe there are no shelves at all, maybe everyone is a "shelf".
Super Snacks is busy, and videos related to store visits are spread overseas
Similar to the "attention economy" of the Internet industry, the display area of supermarkets is limited, and the products that are noticed by consumers first have a more advantageous position on the shelves.
To attract attention offline, you can play display and flash mobs, and for the dazzling array of food and beverage SKUs in supermarkets, the "shelf economy" is the core of the "attention economy".
At a time when hundreds of brands are competing and products are changing with each passing day, hundreds or thousands of products on the shelves of supermarkets must be more careful in packaging in order to enhance the possibility of entering consumers' minds through eyeballs. In areas where product homogeneity is serious (e.g., energy drinks), or where brand status and share are unclear (e.g., quail egg snacks), it is especially important to grab consumers' "attention" between shelves.
The plasticity and convenience of PET bottles bring the possibility of "standing on the shelf" for Yili's first PET bottle of pure milk, and also specialize in the association with the theme of sports.
Yili's "first PET bottle of pure milk" came with the marketing of the Paris Olympic Games, but the advantages of PET bottles themselves will also attract more high-quality milk in the future.
Maybe one day when you pick up a drink on the shelf, you'll get a wider variety of drinks!
Reference Sources:
[1] "Flexible Equipment for Sensitive Beverages," March 23, 2023, Christine RüthKrones magazine
[2] Yuanchuan Research Institute, "A Cardboard Box, Containing a 100 Billion Business Empire," December 2, 2022
[3] https://www.sukano.com/zh/milk-bottles
[4] PET MULTI-LAYER TECHNOLOGY: ATTRACTIVE, SUSTAINABLE AND UNIQUELY INNOVATIVE FOR SHELF STABLE DAIRY PRODUCTS，2020年10月8日
[5] "The Application of PET Packaging Plastic Bottles in Dairy Packaging", April 18, 2017
[6] https://bottledwater.org/environmental-footprint/
[7] "Can Chinese Beverages Be Greener?", March 1, 2024, Cakes, FBIF Food & Beverage Innovation
[8] "From 0 to 10 billion, Dongpeng Beverage has been weaving the net for 30 years", April 22, 2024, FBIF Food and Beverage Innovation
[9] "[Jinzai Food] (003000): Deepening of Large Packaging Strategy, Q1 High Potential Energy Start", Donghai Securities
This article is the original of FBIF Food and Beverage Innovation, author: cake, editor: Bobo, please contact for authorization for reprinting.