Recently, the founder of "Miaofei" revealed at the company's strategy conference that in 2020, The sales volume of Miaofei children's cheese sticks ranked third in the domestic market, second only to the "first cheese stock" Miaoke Lando and the French cheese giant Bagelford.
Industry analysts believe that the continuous expansion of the domestic cheese market, the success of Miaoke Lando in the cheese market, and the high attention paid by capital to the cheese market have promoted more new players such as "Miaofei" to enter the game. In addition to new brands and small brands, Yili, Mengniu, Junlebao, JuneYao Health, Panda Dairy and other head dairy companies are also accelerating their layout, and the cake of the cheese market is rapidly enlarged.
It is worth noting that with the help of capital, many new cheese brands are still in the stage of burning money, mainly relying on OEM and low-price strategies to seize the market. Cheese production is not easy to achieve a balance of taste, nutrition, quality and productivity.
New players run into the field
"0 sucrose cheese sticks are a new starting point for Myofei Health Food." At the strategy conference on June 28, Chen Yun, founder of "Miaofei" and chairman of Miaofei Jiangsu Food Technology Co., Ltd., revealed to the Beijing News reporter that the sales volume of Miaofei children's cheese sticks in 2020 ranked third in the industry, second only to Miaoke Lando and Bac GF, "This year we hope to be the first." ”
Compared with sales, the industry is more concerned about the growth rate of Miaofei. According to the official website information, the Miaofei brand was founded in 2018 and has been stationed in more than 300 retail systems across the country in only 3 years, covering nearly 100,000 outlets and mainstream e-commerce platforms. Being the "first seller of children's cheese sticks" means that Miaofei will be the "first share of cheese" Miaoke Lando as a benchmark brand, but its competitors are far more than one.
As early as 2018, Mengniu established a cheese division, and the annual growth rate reached 66%. In March 2019, Mengniu established a cheese joint venture with Ala, the largest dairy company in Europe, to launch the cheese brand "Aishi Morning Sun", and is currently preparing to join Miaoke Lando. Also in 2018, Yili added a cheese division, launched "Miaozhi" hand-torn cheese, and established Inner Mongolia Yijiahao Cheese Co., Ltd. in June 2021 with a registered capital of 20 million yuan.
Since the beginning of this year, other dairy companies are also accelerating the layout of cheese categories. In January 2021, Junlebao invested in "Chinese people's advocate of edible cheese" Skeqi Food Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. In March this year, Junlebao cheese sticks were launched, and it is planned to rely on the cheese research and development team currently established in Shanghai to lay out the national market, with the goal of "ranking first in the cheese category within five years", and it is expected to lay out a cheese factory with an annual output value of about 1 billion yuan within the year.
In April this year, Yipin Dairy joined hands with Spain's Leite noso Dairy to acquire the local queserías prado cheese factory. Yipin Dairy said that in the future, it plans to launch high-end a2 cheese, organic a2 cheese, organic feta cheese and other products in the European and American markets, and these products will also provide sufficient desalted whey reserves for Yipin high-end infant formula milk powder.
In addition, domestic and foreign brands such as Guangming, Sanyuan, Panda Dairy, Bagelford, Fonterra, Friesland and so on have increased their cheese business in China. In April this year, New Hope Dairy said in an investor survey that it would consider laying out the cheese market. In May, JuneYao Health, the "first share of lactic acid bacteria drinks", also launched the "Flavor Power" cheese stick in some markets.
New brands and new products increase
"Under the influence of the epidemic, the only dairy products that can grow in double digits are room temperature milk, yogurt and cheese." Yang Guochao, senior vice president of Royal Friesland China, said in an interview with the Beijing News reporter that in recent years, the amount of milk drunk by Chinese people has hovered at 33-34 kilograms, which has not come up, indicating that the overall growth rate of liquid milk has slowed down, and it is urgent to expand cheese, cheese, butter and other categories.
According to the "2020-2026 China Cheese Industry Market Demand Prospect and Competition Strategy Research Report" released by Zhiyan Consulting, the size of China's retail cheese terminal market in 2019 was about 6.55 billion yuan, and the compound growth rate in 2010-2019 reached 22%, and it is expected that the terminal market size will reach 11.2 billion yuan in 2024, and the average compound growth rate in 2020-2024 can reach 12%.
At the same time, the performance of the "first cheese stock" Miaoke Lando is also remarkable. In 2016, Guangze Shares, the predecessor of Miaoke Lando, was placed in the mining industry and placed in the dairy assets of the major shareholder, establishing a business direction with cheese as the core, and achieving a turnaround in the first year of transformation. In 2020, the revenue of Miaoke Lando was 2.847 billion yuan, an increase of 63.2% year-on-year; the net profit was 59.258 million yuan, an increase of 208.16%; and the annual cheese production reached 35781.43 tons, an increase of 92.84% over the same period of the previous year. Among them, the cheese stick products showed an explosive growth trend, driving the gross profit margin of The magic blue multi cheese business to rise.
The growing numbers of industries give the market a sniff of business opportunities. According to the data of Tianyancha Professional Edition, there are currently more than 1100 cheese-related enterprises in China with business scope including "cheese, cheese and cheese", and the status is in business, survival, migration in and out of cheese. In 2019, the annual registration volume of cheese-related enterprises in China reached its peak, exceeding 250. In 2020, more than 180 cheese-related companies were newly established.
The Beijing News reporter recently visited Beijing bhg supermarket and Yonghui supermarket and found that this year's children's cheese snack brand in the Miaoke Lando, Bagelford, Yili, Aishi Chenxi, Miaofei, Lezhi cattle and other brands, and more cheese Dr. Cheese, Ji Shi Ding, Herun and other brands, Yonghui's own brand "Master of Hunger" also launched a children's cheese stick products. Online, you can find cheese stick brands such as Panda Dairy, JuneYao Health, and Friesland.
In addition, the variety of children's cheese snacks is no longer limited to cheese bars. For example, Yili launched "suckable" liquid cheese, Mengniu Aishi Morning Sun launched 100% real cheese fresh cheese and room temperature squid cheese snacks, Miaofei launched "0 sucrose" children's cheese stick, Dr. Cheese launched low-salt and high-calcium small round cheese, as well as "a cup of cheese" of Bagelford, "dip music" of Lezhi beef and so on.
Capital helps new products expand
Du Qian (pseudonym), a person in the cheese industry, believes that the success of Miaoke lando in the cheese market and capital market has prompted the number of entrants to begin to increase, and the capital force behind it is indispensable.
In June 2020, Miaofei received a series A investment from Matrix Partners China. In December of the same year, Miaofei completed nearly 100 million yuan of B round financing, led by Hillhouse Venture Capital, followed by Zhong Ding Capital and old shareholder Jingwei China, and the funds will be mainly used for production capacity upgrading and market investment. According to the official WeChat of Matrix Partners, as early as 2019, Matrix Partners China exclusively invested in Miaofei's angel round of financing, and then continued to increase in the A and B rounds, making it the company's largest institutional investor at present.
In December 2020, Miaoke Lando announced its intention to increase its stake by no more than 101 million shares to Inner Mongolia Mengniu Dairy (Group) Co., Ltd. After the transaction is completed, Mengniu will gain control of MiaokeLando. For how to coordinate the cheese business relationship between Miaoke Lando and its Aishi Chenxi brand, Mengniu previously responded to the Beijing News reporter that the two companies will carry out the development and promotion of various cheese products based on their leading production and research and development capabilities, and carry out multi-dimensional business cooperation such as sales channel co-construction, marketing resource sharing, capacity layout improvement, raw material procurement and so on.
In the shareholding structure of Shanghai Cheese Brand Management Co., Ltd., the parent company of "Dr. Cheese", investment institutions can also be found, such as WanshiBen Phase I (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd., Xiamen Challenger Cultural and Creative Venture Capital Partnership, Nanjing Xingnabo Enterprise Management Partnership, etc.
"From Jingwei Investment, Hillhouse Capital to Sequoia Capital, all of them are concerned about the cheese track, the core of which is that the consumption upgrade of hundreds of millions of people has brought huge opportunities, coupled with the recent strong stock price performance of newly listed food and beverage companies, investors have received rich returns, making the cheese market highly concerned by the capital market." Analysis of a cheese production enterprise.
Du Qian believes that at present, the entire children's cheese market has not yet been spelled to the point of "you die and I live", but many new brands are still in the stage of burning money, they often do not have their own factories and industrial chains, mainly rely on OEM and low-price strategies to seize the market, and the entry of capital has brought help to this "burning money" expansion.
The Beijing News reporter noted that in the 90-110 grams of small package children's cheese stick products sold in a store of Yonghui Supermarket, Miaoke Lando, Baekjee Fu and Yili only have individual product discounts, and the product price is about 18 yuan-20 yuan. In contrast, The "Big Cheese Stick" and the Miaofei "0 Sucrose" Cheese Stick adopt a full-line discount strategy, and the discounted prices are only 11.9 yuan and 12.9 yuan respectively. Among the large packaged cheese stick products with more than 300 grams, the actual price of Christine is also the lowest.
In addition, OEM products are not uncommon in the cheese market, such as "Dr. Cheese" a2 platinum protein cheese processing party for Shandong Junjun Cheese Co., Ltd. The OEM of JuneYao Flavor Power Cheese Stick and Yonghui Hunger Master Cheese Stick are Shantou Hualefu Food Co., Ltd.
Du Qian believes that the current children's cheese market is like the start-up stage of the shared bicycle industry, everyone is using capital to race the ground, but there are not many brands that can stay in the end. "Cheese production is not easy to achieve a balance of taste, nutrition, quality and productivity. Our real opponents are not those small brands, but Giants such as Yili and Mengniu, which have advantages in channels and capital. ”
How to create barriers to competition?
The lack of layout in cheese household consumption and catering channels also makes it impossible for some new entrants to fully compete with the giants. For example, in the Flagship Store of Jistin Tmall, there are currently only three products: cheese sticks, cheese cups and cheese slices. Although Miaofei has launched cheese slices and mozzarella cheese products on the basis of children's cheese sticks, Chen Yun admits that Miaofei has made less efforts in the catering channel, mainly doing pre-packaged food in the early stage, and will focus on the fastest growing track.
In contrast, Miaoke Lando has three major product lines, namely the ready-to-eat nutrition line represented by the cheese stick, the family cheese line represented by the baked cheese, and the professional field line for catering and tea channels. In 2020, the revenue growth rate of these three major product lines was 165.86%, 108.82% and 29.90% respectively.
Revenue of each business segment of Mioclando.
As the first manufacturer in China with independent processing cheese production technology, Sanyuan Food has the largest cheese production base in North China, and is also the main cheese slice supplier of McDonald's and KFC in China. In addition, food service has become one of Fonterra's fastest growing businesses in Greater China. In China, one in every two pizzas uses Fonterra's Anga Marsula cheese.
The lack of this industrial chain and product line layout is also reflected in the gap between domestic brands and imported brands. Although Miaofei has ranked third in the sales of children's cheese bars in China, according to Euromonitor Consulting statistics, in the overall domestic cheese consumption market in 2020, Miaoke Lando ranked second with a market share of 19.8%, ranking first and third respectively by the French savencia sa's "Bagelford" (25.0%) and the French Baylor Group's "Lezhi Cattle" (5.9%). The market share of the top three brands is 50.7%, and the market share of the top five brands is 60.9%.
In this competitive landscape, how to achieve "children's cheese stick sales first", Chen Yun admitted in an interview with the Beijing News reporter, "Miaofei's competitors have never been weak, but the reason for rapid growth is mainly to focus on basic management and research." ”
Chen Yun previously put forward a point of view that the domestic cheese industry supply chain is not mature enough, and the production capacity of the foundry is limited. Own factories can provide stable production capacity, which is the basis for brands to continue to launch competitive new products, and can also control food safety in their own hands. In the one year after receiving the investment of Jingwei Angel Round, Miaofei completed the layout of product iteration, soaring sales, channel sinking, self-built factories, etc., and established the largest single factory in the field of children's cheese in China.
Wang Huadong, a partner at Matrix Partners China, said after Miaofei obtained a Series B financing that cheese is an emerging market with a compound annual growth rate of more than 20% and rapid growth, while the children's snack market is also shaping a new pattern and segmentation. The supply chain, product formula and channel laying of children's cheese products will jointly superimpose barriers and thresholds for business.
Beijing News reporter Guo Tie photography Guo Tie
Editor Zhu Fenglan Proofreader Wei Zhuo