Ten Billion Cheese Market Soaring: "Product + Channel" Ability Tests Enterprise Competitiveness

When snacks meet the children's economy, the door of the 100 billion market opens rapidly. Among them, cheese products due to high protein, high calcium and other nutritional characteristics, is gradually becoming a "candy substitute" for young parents.

There is no doubt that the domestic children's food track is developing towards a healthy and differentiated trend. According to Qiu Yue, head of tmall leisure snacks industry, children's food has a market capacity of more than 600 billion yuan, and the demand for healthy snacks is nearly 100 billion yuan. After the outbreak, cheese stick has become the fastest growing sub category in dairy industry, with a gross profit of 50%. Not only dairy giants such as Mengniu, Yili and Guangming have flocked to the end, but snack brands, channel merchants and start-up companies have also come to dig for gold.

2021 is a key year for the rise of China's cheese industry. On July 17, at the 12th China dairy industry conference, Zhang Shuyi, a researcher at the national animal husbandry general station, said, "the National Children's cheese market will reach more than 10 billion yuan in 2021."

Capital entry

According to the reporter's observation, in the refrigerator of chain supermarket, cheese sticks have been specially classified and occupy a whole column of shelves. In July this year, a set of data was disclosed at the 2021 China cheese Development Summit Forum: before 2015, the domestic cheese market scale was less than 500 million yuan, and the market scale has soared in recent two years. Last year, the number has jumped to 8.8 billion yuan. In fact, it is not that domestic consumers have suddenly adapted to the daily eating scene of cheese, but cheese sticks have almost helped to boost the rapid expansion of the track.

"China imported 114900 tons of cheese in 2019 and 129300 tons in 2020. By may 2021, the import volume has reached 82700 tons, with a year-on-year increase of 66.4%. The rapid growth this year may be related to the explosive growth of cheese sticks this year." Luo Zhigang, general manager of Beijing Yinhe Road Economic and Trade Co., Ltd., said at the forum, China's import volume has raised the price of cream cheese in many parts of the world.

2021 is a key year for the rise of China's cheese industry. Visual China

From the perspective of industry development, practitioners will see the opportunity of cheese sticks as early as 2019. In May 2019, the parent company of "Dr. cheese" was established in Shanghai dairy brand management Co., Ltd. Chen Yuhua, the major shareholder, was previously the person in charge of odelberg China. The parent company dmk is the largest dairy enterprise in Germany, and its core business in China is not only normal temperature milk but also cheese. In June of that year, Zhang Zhigang resigned from miaokelando, and later appeared as the executive director and general manager of miaofei Jiangsu Food Technology Co., Ltd., which was established in September; Mr. Chen Yun, CEO of miaofei, is also from miaocorando, who was vice president of miaokerando and manager of Yili cheese business department before. At the end of last year, miaofei completed round B financing of nearly 100 million yuan, led by hillhood venture capital, followed by Zhongding capital and Jingwei China. In the same period, Dr. cheese also welcomed the favor of Challenger capital. In March this year, Dr. cheese accepted the b-round investment from Sequoia China, all things capital and sinach capital.

At the same time, Yili and Mengniu are also expanding their cheese division. Mengniu and Arla have jointly built a high-end cheese brand "Aishi Chenxi". In July this year, Mengniu invested 3 billion yuan in miaokelando through fixed increase. Mengniu became its controlling shareholder with a shareholding ratio of 28.46%.

"Although I had always been concerned about cheese and wanted to make achievements in this small track of cheese, I didn't rush for success. When I felt that China's cheese was approaching the golden development stage, I took the opportunity to resolutely enter the cheese track." on September 6, Chai Xiu, chairman of miaocolando, said in an interview with 21st century economic report that as early as 2007, Miaokelando began to pay attention to cheese, but it only officially entered the cheese market in 2016, and in just five years, it ranked first in the market.

"Gather all the strength to sprint to the cheese track." is the reason why Chai Xiu led miaokelando to become the first place in the cheese track. She believes that the first is to choose the right track, the second is to make clear the goal of being the first, and then to build the "five forces": brand power, channel power, innovation force, resource integration force and team fighting force.

In Chai Xiu's view, the best way to integrate resources is to use "5 + 3 + 2" to solve the problem of horizontal competition between Mengniu and miaokelando. "Mengniu not only brings capital, but also wisdom, strategy and a strong base camp, which always provide strength for the development of miaokerando. For example, Mengniu's milk source and global supply chain provide absolute advantages for its raw materials. At the same time, through the adoption of Mengniu's quality control system, miaocolando has achieved great success in product upgrading and smart factory management Three years less acceleration. "

On September 1, fbif released the 2021 list of China's top 100 food and beverage companies. Among them, miaokelando became the fastest growing enterprise, taking a strong lead with 77.92% performance growth. According to the announcement, miaokerando achieved revenue of 2.067 billion yuan in the first half of the year, up 90.80% year on year; The non net profit increased by 480.61% year on year.

Industry chaos

The reason why there are so many cheese stick brands in the market at one time is that this fast-growing high gross profit track makes everyone want to "have a share". At the same time, various concepts began to fill the cheese market. Chai said that miaokelando, as the industry leader, has an important responsibility to safeguard the healthy development of the industry. "Miaokelando cheese stick is characterized by good absorption of nutrition, and there is no other marketing gimmick. It is just from the reality that the product is low in salt, preservative, essence and pigment, which is more conducive to children's health."

The industry with low threshold is often the easiest to fight a price war. Capital has already "aimed" at the high margin cheese track, and "price war" is also the best way for capital to play: promoting acquisition and merger, prompting the industry to reshuffle, and then the player's listing capital benefits and exits. The effect of price war is obvious, especially online channels. Miaofei's director of operations has publicly disclosed on the social platform that "it took three months from less than a million monthly sales to tens of millions of monthly sales. It took six months to go from tens of millions of monthly sales to millions of daily sales."

In fact, more and more enterprises rush into the track, and the price war has started since last year. In the face of the inevitable price war, Chai stressed that miaokelando would never take the initiative to launch a price war. "If a big brand gains its share by price war, the enterprise brand is doomed to go far. If the enterprise loses gross profit in the price war, it will give the profit to consumers in the short term, but it will damage the interests of consumers in the long run. Only when the enterprise has reasonable profit and reasonable gross profit, can the enterprise have a continuous development internal power." based on this, Chai Xiu proposed that "the boss should do the right thing". What is the right thing to do? She believes that it is necessary to innovate product development, enhance product competitiveness, and keep leading edge with differentiated competition.

"Only when consumers benefit, the consumer group can expand, and the cheese industry can develop healthily." Chai Xiu expressed her unique views on competition. She believes that the emergence of competitive products just shows that this small track is developing rapidly. "The market is constantly expanding. From the perspective of industry development, this is a good thing. Dairy products also came from the small track in those years, and grew into a strategic industry for the national economy and people's livelihood. However, it should be noted that the simultaneous influx of competitive products into the industry in a short period of time will certainly have a certain impact on the market and bring some confusion to consumers. It is necessary to do so at this time The boss of the industry should do the right thing, play the exemplary role of example, and lead the stable and healthy development of the industry. "

At a time when the industry is in turmoil, the actions of regulators may bring new variables. In October last year, the Secretariat of the national food safety standards review committee issued "processed cheese and cheese products of national food safety standards" (Draft for comments), which stipulates that the proportion of cheese should be greater than 50% to be called "processed cheese", while the products with cheese content ratio between 15% and 50% can only be called "cheese products".

As we all know, the biggest selling point of cheese sticks is calcium. Although the calcium in the cheese bar comes from the cheese in the raw material, the nutritional composition of this "processed cheese" is not the same as that of cheese. It is understood that the processed cheese is based on the cheese and processed with various additives to produce the taste and taste that consumers like. According to the current standard, the content of cheese in processed cheese is not a mandatory item.

In order to maintain the position and development speed of the "No.1" industry, miaokelando has played the strongest combination of "product + channel". Chai Xiu will personally participate in the taste and pricing of each new product. "I will be strict with the product like a product manager." she revealed that building product strength is the core work of the company in the second half of the year. "Miaokelando has set up its normal temperature business unit, and is expected to launch normal temperature cheese products in the second half of the year. At present, the ecological map of miaokelan multi-channel construction has been gradually improved, laying a solid foundation for the rapid growth of future performance."

It is understood that miaokelando's mozurila cheese has successfully entered KFC, Pizza Hut and other chain brands. "The cooperation with the whole family, KFC, Pizza Hut and other enterprises mainly depends on product quality and brand effect. These to-b cooperation does not contribute much to the overall profits of miaokerando." Chai Xiu said that while focusing on the b-end cooperation, miaokerando pays more attention to the C-end sales.