In recent years, the development momentum of great health has been rising. Among them, the sub-category of probiotics has soared in popularity under the improvement of public awareness. Because of this, in the face of the continued sluggishness of the old bank's prosperity, dairy companies have launched layouts in this field, trying to obtain a new growth curve through "diversification".
However, with the deepening of the layout of dairy enterprises, the AB side of probiotics has also been exposed to the spotlight: on the one hand, there is a prosperous scene of a group of heroes competing for deer, and on the other hand, there is a mixture of fish and dragons under the mud and sand. So what does this road mean for dairy companies? How to get through, go well, and become its own core competitiveness?
A number of dairy companies are fighting fiercely on the probiotics track
Affected by factors such as the continuous decline of the new population and the intensification of product homogeneity, the dairy business is becoming more and more complex and difficult. Judging from the performance in 2023, more than half of the dairy enterprises are in poor condition, with losses, declines, and no increase in profits. Under this, dairy companies have to re-examine their market strategies and actively look for new ways to grow.
According to the actual trend, probiotics have become one of the key directions of dairy enterprises. It is understood that the two leading companies in the domestic dairy industry have been laid out here. Among them, Yili has launched the probiotic brand "Quanjiayi", while Mengniu has probiotic brands "Youyi C" and "Troyi", and both of them continue to invest in research and development.
Up to now, Yili has formed four platforms: the construction of probiotic strain resource bank, probiotic function development and clinical evaluation, strain application and fermentation technology, strain technology and quality system. At the same time, four independent probiotic strains have been developed for mature industrial applications, including BL-99, K56, ET-22 and YLGB-1496.
Mengniu has built a resource bank of 12,000 strains and a screening platform for functional bacteria, and has formed a complete set of systematic technical solutions for the research of lactic acid bacteria and probiotics. The self-cultivated probiotic "PC-01" has been successfully industrialized and applied to Youyi C and other products. In addition, a series of strains such as Probio-M8 and Probio-M9 were successfully screened.
In addition to the two "big guys", dairy companies such as New Dairy, H&H Group, and JuneYao Health have also joined one after another. Bright Dairy has the largest lactic acid bacteria strain resource library (> 8,100 strains) independently established by domestic dairy enterprises, more than 50 strains with independent intellectual property rights, and has realized the industrial development of ST-III, LC2W and other strains, and completed the space deep space carrying of 11 strains of lactic acid bacteria in 10 years, with which it has launched the JCAN health series of probiotics.
But when it comes to the field of infants and young children, the most noteworthy is Ausnutria. It not only has the infant probiotic brand "Aiyisen", the adult gastrointestinal care brand "NC", etc., but also its "MP108" is the first independent research and development of infant edible strains in China, and has successfully entered the list of strains that can be used for infant food. Due to the undertaking of the national probiotics demonstration production line, it is also the only enterprise in China's dairy industry that has established a whole probiotic industry chain.
To sum up, it is not difficult to see that probiotics have been placed on the high hopes of dairy companies to leverage performance growth, and Yili said bluntly: "This is a key success factor for becoming a global health food industry." So what is the real current state of the probiotics market? For dairy companies, what is the deep significance of deep cultivation in the field of probiotics?
Dairy companies are deeply engaged in the field of probiotics
From the introduction of public information, it can be seen that the intestine is one of the very key organs of the human body, which not only undertakes the important task of food digestion and nutrition of the whole body, but also the main position of the immune system, where immune cells account for 70% of the entire immune system of the human body. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that gut health is closely related to human health.
However, according to the latest data from Dr. Chunyu, a mobile doctor-patient communication platform, the number of consultations related to intestinal health reached 26.568 million in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 45.7% compared with 2021. It can be seen that more and more people are aware of the importance of taking care of intestinal health, and tend to take probiotic products to improve the balance of intestinal microecology.
Under this situation, the market size of probiotic functional foods in mainland China is growing at an unprecedented rate, and is expected to continue to expand at an average annual compound growth rate of 10%, and is expected to exceed 190 billion yuan by 2028. [1] This strong market demand and broad market prospects are one of the core driving forces for dairy companies to choose to deepen the field of probiotics.
On the other hand, for dairy companies, the probiotic market alone not only has huge development potential, but also the combination with dairy products can also distinguish similar products, attract consumers, and ultimately drive the growth of performance. Because in the new era of consumption, people's demand for dairy products is not only high quality, so more diversified expectations are put forward to the supply side, such as: blood sugar control, help brain and vision development, better digestion and absorption, improve immunity, etc.
Numerous studies have shown that probiotics not only regulate intestinal health, but also have probiotic effects in improving sleep, allergies, weight, blood sugar and blood lipids. Therefore, by combining probiotics with dairy products, dairy companies can not only enrich the nutritional value of dairy products, but also further meet consumers' demand for healthy food.
In addition, the research and development of probiotics has built a deep and wide moat for enterprises. Nowadays, the companies on the infant formula track have entered the stage of "close hand-to-hand combat". In this situation, in order not to be eliminated from the game, finding differentiated advantages has become the core issue within dairy enterprises.
As Michael Porter, a well-known strategic management expert, said: when a company can provide its customers with something unique that cannot be replaced by other competitors, and its value to customers is more than just a cheap commodity, the company differentiates itself from its competitors.
In short, probiotics have brought a broad market space and good development opportunities for dairy enterprises. Whether it is to promote the diversification of the product matrix, or to promote the optimization and upgrading of dairy products, or to build the core competitiveness of enterprises.
In the face of the challenges of brands blooming everywhere and quality mixed,
How do dairy companies get out of the circle?
As the so-called opportunities and challenges go hand in hand, the field of probiotics is no exception. In this big plate, there are not only new and old companies specializing in it, but also companies with strategic layout of food, medicine or health care products are eating this cake, which also leads to the emergence of brands in the market and mixed quality.
Previously, the mother and child frontier had published an article "OEM brands are everywhere, how "profitable" is the probiotics business? It is pointed out that there are now many probiotic brands with the help of "OEM" to achieve rapid launch and sales. But if you dig deeper, you will find that there are a lot of cats in it.
For example, probiotics made for a few cents can be sold at a high price after packaging. A number of media pointed out that the OEM price of probiotics is as low as 1 mao/bag, and 8 mao/bag is already a mid-to-high-end product. This kind of low-cost OEM has undoubtedly lowered the entry threshold of the probiotics industry, attracting many companies to rush in, making the market competition more and more fierce.
In addition, some products are ambiguous on the labeling of key information such as the number of live bacteria and the name of the culture. Previously, the Beijing News conducted random inspections on some probiotic products and found that only 2 of the 9 samples had the number of viable bacteria that met the claim, which brought great trouble to consumers, and also made the controversy about probiotics growing in the outside world.
What's more important is that due to the multiple attributes of probiotics sold in the mainland market, this also provides an opportunity for illegal publicity. Many ordinary foods under the banner of "probiotics" openly claim to have therapeutic effects, which not only misleads consumers, but also violates the relevant provisions of the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China.
Although the development space in the field of probiotics is full of potential, in the face of various negative factors, how to reverse consumers' impression of probiotics, help the probiotics industry to achieve healthy development, and deeply rooted the brand in the hearts of consumers has become a problem that enterprises in the industry need to face and solve together.
Exegesis:
[1] Qianzhan Industry Research Institute. Foreseeing 2023: Panorama of China's Probiotics Industry in 2023.