Advertisements often say that there is a source of convergence, which is called the New Year.
But this year, at least for Huiyuan, this year is not very good.
On January 18, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange officially delisted Huiyuan Juice.
Who would have thought that Huiyuan, which once dominated China's juice industry, had a market value of more than HK$30 billion at its peak.
In the end, it only ended in a dismal end of HK$5.4 billion.
From the decline of a generation of juice giants, it seems that the development of the entire juice industry can also be glimpsed.
In fact, in 2009, in China's nearly 800 billion beverage market, juice also accounted for 1/4 of the proportion, in ten years, the status of juice has declined to less than 1/6.
Today, in the ranking of China's top 10 soft drink companies, cola, tea, water, milk and functional drinks are all on the list, but there is no juice.
The shrinking juice market is inseparable from the production line behind it.
Take the most typical orange juice, citrus, as the largest fruit category in China, the yield is increasing year by year.
From September to November every year, it is the season when oranges are concentrated on the market, but the orange juice factory cannot digest it for a while, resulting in most of them being flowed into the market to eat directly.
As a result, throughout the year, 60% of the orange juice raw materials in China's juice factories still rely on imports.
Not only does fruit juice rely on imports, but juice production lines also need to be imported, especially some high-end large-scale production lines, almost all of which are imported.
It can be said that the supply chain of China's juice looks complete and huge, in fact, the scale is not high, and some key equipment and raw materials cannot be replaced by domestic products for the time being.
On the one hand, there is the continuous downturn in the juice market, and on the other hand, there is a steady stream of new players.
The head enterprises of other categories, including Nongfu Spring and Xicha, have begun to pour into the juice industry, why is this?
First of all, the head of the juice industry is not concentrated enough at present, and it is easy for new brands to "counterattack" the position.
At present, the head concentration of China's soft drink industry is the lowest among large countries, and the market share of the TOP 10 is the only one in the big country that does not exceed half.
The market share of China's top 5 juices is the lowest of all soft drinks.
In addition to Huiyuan, there are very few juice brands that you think of in the first time.
Secondly, China's juice industry is ushering in a round of consumption upgrades.
People who pursue nutrition and health and love to drink juice are increasingly choosing medium and high concentration juices with higher "fruit" content.
This high concentration, freshly squeezed pure juice, the English name is Not From Concentrate, referred to as NFC, that is, non-concentrated reducing juice, and its counterpart is From Concentrate (FC), concentrated reducing juice.
Huiyuan's "100% pure fruit juice" is actually FC juice, which is canned after mixing concentrated juice with water, and the cost is lower.
The real NFC juice, the price is relatively high, the shelf life is relatively short.
Today, the category is growing rapidly at a rate of 10-30% per year.
However, it is not so easy to promote NFC juice, and price is the biggest obstacle.
Juice industry insider Gao Jiajia mentioned: buying a liter of NFC abroad may be less than 2 US dollars or even less, and in China, it may now buy 300 ml at about this price.
It can be seen that the cost reduction space and shelf price reduction space of industrialization are huge.
Chinese will definitely identify more and more with medium and high concentration juices, but the process will be relatively long, and 10-20 years may not be said.
However, the trend of China's juice industry to develop in the direction of high concentration and high-end is inevitable.
From 2017 to 2019, the compound annual growth rate of medium and high concentration juices in China reached 14.9%.
In 2016-2019, the market for low-concentration juice not only shrank by 6.54 billion yuan, but also fell by nearly 10 percentage points.
In the past 5 years, sugar-free tea has jumped from a small role in market share to a large market of 11.5 billion, and perhaps the same is true for NFC juice.
Now that the curtain has been drawn, some people have withdrawn, some people have appeared, who can win the applause of the whole hall? And look at the good drama in the back.