At its peak, Prince Milk, which was one of the top two brands of lactic acid bacteria in China, collapsed when it was ready to go public, and it was surprising that Li Tuchun, the founder of Prince Milk, was unfortunately imprisoned for this. So, what is the truth of the Prince Milk incident? Is the brand of Prince Milk still there?
As we all know, Prince Milk is an enterprise founded by Li Tuchun in 1996. As early as 1990, Li Tuchun resigned from the state-owned enterprise iron rice bowl to go to Shenzhen, during which he came into contact with a lactic acid bacteria drink and planned to cultivate deeply here. In 1996, Li Tuchun founded Zhuzhou Sunrise Jiangnan Industrial Group (the predecessor of Prince Milk) in Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, and its sales reached 30 million yuan a year later. In 1997, Prince Milk won the CCTV "Biaowang" with a sky-high price of 88.88 million, and development began to accelerate. Since then, the production bases of Beijing Miyun, Sichuan Chengdu, Jiangsu Kunshan and Hubei Huanggang have been launched. By 2007, Prince Milk had more than 7,000 distributors across the country, with revenue of more than 2 billion yuan and a market share of more than 76%.
At the same time, Prince Milk began to diversify its strategy, and the need for funds was very urgent. At the end of 2006, Prince Milk received a joint investment of $73 million from investment banks such as Morgan, Abbey And Goldman Sachs. In September 2007, Prince Milk received a low-interest three-year credit loan of RMB 500 million from six international consortiums led by Citibank. However, Prince Milk failed to complete the leap-forward development with the help of foreign capital, and the listing that has been planned has not been realized. A variety of factors, such as the melamine incident in the dairy industry, the failure of diversification and the international financial crisis, finally crushed the capital chain of Prince Milk.
In January 2012, Li Tuchun was suspected of illegally absorbing deposits from the public, and the prosecution did not prosecute Li Tuchun, who was detained for 15 months, and finally became free. However, the princely milk he founded with his own hands has irreparable bankruptcy. According to the Draft Reform Plan of Prince Milk released on September 1, 2011, the consortium formed by Xinhualian Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinhualian") and Beijing Sanyuan Food Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Sanyuan") will participate in the restructuring of Prince Milk as an investor.
After the reorganization plan comes into effect, the consortium will provide 715 million yuan to repay all the debts of Prince Milk, and obtain 100% of the shares of the restructured Hunan Prince Milk, Zhuzhou Prince Milk, supply and marketing company, and all the reorganization assets of Prince Milk. As a former well-known entrepreneur and the founder of Prince Milk, he was eventually swept out of the house - Li Tuchun's fate naturally attracted much attention. In Li Tuchun's view, the reorganization plan of Prince Milk, which was adjudicated by the court, has not been perfectly implemented so far, and the equity held by Prince Milk, as the founder, has also been forcibly transferred without his own signature.
Li Tuchun once said in an interview: "Prince's milk is like my child, I poured too much affection into him and personally led him to the peak." The fall of princely milk is mainly because of the conspiracy of capital. My biggest mistake was that I failed to resist the "temptation" of these capitals.
From the CCTV standard king who was once in the prime to the final imprisonment, from the unfortunate imprisonment to the acquittal to the change of ownership of the enterprise, Li Tuchun, the founder of Prince Milk, is so unfortunate. Although in 2015 after the reorganization, the revenue of Prince Milk was still as high as 1 billion yuan, but in 2016 it was less than 200 million yuan, and now Prince Milk has basically disappeared in the market.