China Focus: Mengniu, Yili, Master Kong, Alibaba durian sales and more feature in this round-up
Beating the MNCs: Mengniu, Yili and Master Kong the three most commonly consumed brands in China
China’s home-grown brands took the top three spots for the most consumed food and beverage brands amongst Chinese families, research from Kantar Worldpanel has shown.
Titled “Who is winning more Chinese consumers in 2018?”, the report analysed the consumption habits of Chinese families in FMCG goods in the past one year, starting from October last year.
While P&G topped the chart, major Chinese brand Yili – which was second in place, was the most consumed brand in the food and beverage space.
Ranked 3rd and 4th overall, food and beverage brands Mengniu and Master Kong were consumed by 156m and 142m families respectively.
Mengniu opens first SEA production base in Indonesia, aims to be No. 1 yogurt brand in three to five years
Chinese dairy giant Mengniu has opened a manufacturing plant in Cikarang, Indonesia dedicated to the production of its flagship YoyiC line of yogurt products.
Starting from this month, the YoyiC products will be sold in 12,000 stores in major cities in Indonesia.
This is its first South East Asian (SEA) production base and it aims to be the number one yogurt brand in Indonesia in three to five years.
e-Durian: Alibaba partners with Malaysian durian supplier for online China sales
The Alibaba Group has teamed up with Malaysian durian supplier BEHO Fresh to sell Malaysia-sourced Musang King durians to China via e-commerce, on the back of soaring consumer demand for the ‘King of Fruits’.
Alibaba’s e-shopping platform Tmall, its sourcing platform Win-Chain, the China Certification and Inspection Group Malaysia (CCIC) and Malaysian durian supplier BEHO Fresh have teamed up in what has been called a ‘strategic cooperation’.
According to Alibaba, “The deal marks a further effort by Alibaba to harness the power of e-commerce and its dynamic ecosystem to contribute to the growth of Malaysia's agricultural exports.”
Beho Fresh’s role will be to provide Win-Chain with whole frozen Musang King durians, which will then be distributed via Tmall and other e-commerce marketplaces in China.
Carrot then stick: Alibaba’s fresh produce arm Hema under fire for changing product labels
Hema, Alibaba’s fresh products arm, has come under fire for selling packets of carrots with altered in-stock date.
The label-changing act was spotted at Hema Daning supermarket branch in Shanghai. The manager in charge of the supermarket was eventually fired six days after an inspection was conducted.
The saga could be traced to Nov 15, when a shopper spotted a staff changing the labels of the in-stock dates for a packet of carrots. The carrots were from the brand “Chongming”.
The shopper took a closer look and found that the packets of carrots, which were initially labelled with the in-stock dates as Nov 9, 10, and 11, were all replaced with a new label, with in-stock dates labelled as Nov 15.
New Chinese study highlights inadequacies of current International Diabetes Federation metabolic syndrome criteria
Criteria set by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) may not be sensitive enough in identifying metabolic syndrome as opposed to the consensus definition, says a new study.
In this China study, metabolic syndrome was defined as ‘a cluster of the most dangerous risk factors for heart attack including diabetes, [high blood glucose], abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure’.
“[Of over 7,000 adults that participated], the prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 16.9% and 23.8% according to the International Diabetes Federation criteria and the consensus definition, respectively,” said the authors.
“The International Diabetes Federation criteria failed to identify 28.8% of the participants identified by the consensus definition.”
