"Chocolate and ice cream blend beautifully, and you will take home full of joy."
On August 2, Menglong, positioned as a high-end ice cream brand, was questioned about the "double standard": Menglong's domestic version of ice cream uses a large proportion of vegetable oil and only a small amount of milk powder, while Menglong, which is produced in Europe, is made of milk.
In response to the doubts, Menglong responded on the official Weibo on August 1 that its products belong to the combination of vegetable fat ice cream, which refers to the use of vegetable fat for ice cream, not the use of vegetable fat powder in ice cream, after indirectly acknowledging that Menglong is not made of milk, Menglong deleted the above Weibo on August 2.
On the afternoon of August 2, Shell financial reporter called the official customer service of Menglong, and the staff said that the situation about the use of cream in Menglong ice cream, the reason for deleting Weibo, etc. could not be responded to, and they could only collect relevant questions and could not respond immediately, "We have not received an exact notice, this problem I can only record feedback, and can only wait for colleagues from relevant departments to make a reply before I can inform you of your call in detail." ”
As of the morning of August 3, Menglong had not publicly responded to the questions on the Internet again. The reporter also did not receive a call back from Menglong.
The "two faces" of the dream dragon?
Foreign products use pure milk In domestic products, dairy raw materials are not publicized
"We add milk, sugar and water and stir them to create an ice cream mixture."
In a BBC column called "InsidetheFactory", reporters are visiting Unilever's Helusher processing plant in Kloster, England, where staff in uniforms with the Unilever logo describe the process of making an ice cream. According to the video, about 4 tons of milk are in each mixing bucket, which requires adding 4 kilograms of vanilla extract.
"What kind of ice cream is this made?" The reporter asked.
"This will make a dream dragon," the factory staff responded.
After the shell financial reporter searched, he found a Dream Dragon ice cream that was being sold on a foreign e-commerce platform. Among them, the top four in the ingredient list include milk, sugar, cream and skim milk. On the packaging of a Menglong ice cream product, there is also a sign that reads "OUR MILK & CREAM PROMISE NO ARTIFICIAL GROWTH HORMONES USED ON COWS", which means to ensure that the milk and cream used do not come from cattle that use artificial growth hormone.
So, what kind of dream dragons do we usually buy? Shell Finance contacted the customer service of a platform and The Luxue flagship store, which provided the reporter with an ingredient list of a certain product of Menglong. The ingredient list shows that the chocolate flavored ice cream uses ingredients including drinking water, chocolate (29%), white sugar, vegetable oils, milk powder (3.4%), whey powder and other ingredients.
In the Weibo that Menglong has deleted, when mentioning ingredients, it means that "Menglong uses a specific process and recipe, scientifically compares the fat and protein in ice cream, and reconciles the milk aroma and taste of ice cream", and emphasizes the difference between vegetable oil and vegetable fat powder, and does not explain why there are "two recipes" with Menglong.
So, has Menglong deceived Chinese consumers? A careful study of The menglong sales page can be seen that as a high-end ice cream, menglong has never advertised the use of fresh milk in the domestic publicity, but focuses on "100% imported Belgian chocolate" in all the propaganda.
In the introduction of raw materials for the main structure of the ice cream, it is said that "the vanilla beans used in Menglong ice cream are from Madagascar", and for what kind of dairy products are used, Menglong does not mention and does not have any guarantees.
Menglong claims that its ice cream sells more than 1 billion pieces a year
Behind the "high-end": the average price of milk powder and whey powder purchased by Unilever is 16 yuan / kg
According to the data, Menglong is a sub-brand of the international FMCG giant Unilever and Lu Xue, and is the company's largest ice cream brand.
In an article released by The official WeChat account of Menglong in 2019, it was introduced that "Menglong, as one of the earliest brands to bring the concept of pop-up stores to China, has a maximum passenger flow of 6,000 people per day", "Menglong originated in Europe, sold well all over the world, and sold more than 1 billion ice creams per year".
Behind the dream dragon ice cream is also the history of Unilever's wealth harvesting.
Shell Finance noted that the brand Menglong, which was born in 1989, has been positioned in the high-end market since birth, and the target consumer group is an adult who is willing to pay higher prices for high-quality products. In 1993, Unilever's Heluxue (China) Co., Ltd. was established, and Menglong entered China in 1996 as a product.
At this time, there were still two years before Häagen-Dazs entered China, and a Chinese ice cream was only a few cents, and holding a dream dragon was a high-end representative. In addition to Menglong, Cute Duo, Helu Xue, Many Circles, Mai KuShi, So Good Light You are all sub-brands of Helu Xue.
So, what is the situation with other brands of ice cream with Lu Xue?
On August 2, Shell Finance searched for milk in which ice cream in Heluxue's flagship store, and only retrieved two types of products, "Thousand Layer Snow" and "Super Cute And Many". The introductory posters of these two products are written "Hokkaido Light Cow Milk" and "Selected 100% Pure Milk".
Among them, the price of 71g×4 "super cute and more" is displayed as 38.9 yuan, which is cheaper than the 64g × 4 Menglong ice cream.
It is worth noting that the raw materials such as milk powder purchased by Unilever in China are not high-end.
Shell Finance found that Shanghai Hanyang, a subsidiary of Panda Dairy, an A-share listed company, is one of the stable suppliers of Unilever and Heluxue, mainly providing milk powder and whey powder and other milk powder trade for the two companies.
According to the audit report released by Panda Dairy, in 2017, Unilever (China) spent 66.5825 million yuan to purchase 3830.94 tons of milk powder and whey powder products from Panda Dairy. Based on this calculation, the average price of these dairy products is 17.38 yuan / kg
In 2018 and 2019, Unilever used 30.4162 million yuan and 27.7142 million yuan respectively to purchase 1841.37 tons and 1789.34 tons of similar products in Panda Dairy, with an average price of 16.5 yuan / kg and 15.48 yuan / kg, respectively.
Dairy products, which cost less than $20 per kilogram, eventually became raw materials for Unilever's food and tea sectors. According to the announcement of Panda Dairy, Unilever (China) purchases these raw materials, mainly to produce ice cream, milk tea and other products.
Unilever behind Menglong: Repeatedly on the black list proposed to accelerate the development of the Chinese market
As the world's leading FMCG company, Unilever is also well-known as one of the World's Top 500 companies. According to Unilever's financial report, the company's three main business segments are food and refreshments, home care, beauty and personal care.
Among the food and refreshments, we are more familiar with brands such as Heluxue and Lipton. Home care and beauty personal care on
Vaseline, Lux, Xia Shilian, Dauphin, Aomiao, Gold Spinning and many more are all Unilever brands.
According to unilever's official website, "Unilever produces and sells more than 400 brands worldwide. More than 2.5 billion people use our products every day. ”
According to Unilever's financial report, unilever's operating income in 2020 was 50.724 billion euros and net profit was 5.581 billion euros. In unilever's semi-annual report for 2021 released in July this year, Unilever's revenue for the first half of the year was 25.8 billion euros, of which beauty and personal care, home care, food and refreshments revenue was 10.4 billion euros, 5.2 billion euros and 10.2 billion euros respectively.
In addition, in the 2021 semi-annual report, Unilever also repeatedly mentioned the Chinese market, saying that "in the first half of the year, driven by China's continued recovery and the strong performance of South Asia, emerging markets grew by 8.3%". The strategic direction also mentions the use of the company's strength in emerging markets to accelerate development in the United States, India and China.
Although it is not difficult to see that Unilever attaches great importance to the big cake of the Chinese market, on the other hand, Unilever, which has been in China for many years, is also frequently on the black list.
As early as 2011, Unilever was fined 2 million yuan by the Shanghai Price Bureau for indiscriminately disseminating information on the price increase of daily chemical products.
Among the non-compliant products released by the Jiangsu Provincial Food and Drug Administration in January 2018, the chlorimidazole labeled on the product label was not detected in unilever's Qingyang shampoo.
Immediately after a flight inspection at the end of September 2018, the relevant departments found that Unilever had 2 serious defects and 5 general defects, two of which were related to quality management.
In 2011, Unilever's Lipton Tea also had a rare earth content exceeding the standard and was blacklisted as unqualified products.
Beijing News shell financial reporter Li Yunqi Editor Chen Li Proofreader Li Shihui