Crazy "longevity medicine" survey: foreign countries sell at sky-high prices after gilding, some consumers directly buy raw materials to eat
60 tablets, 9.6 grams, but the price ranges from 2,000 yuan to over 10,000 yuan. It seems that overnight, the "longevity medicine", which has been popular in the small circle for a long time, entered the public eye in a sensational way.
"Longevity medicine" attracts not only people who want to live long: the field represents the listed company Jindawei set 8 daily limit in 11 days, which is confirming the madness of capital.
Yao Yuan (pseudonym), an investor with a keen sense of smell, noticed the recent explosive trend in the field of "longevity medicine" NMN. A research report circulating in the industry and optimistic about this field made him eager to try. After choosing, Yao Yuan, who had never bought health care products in the past, decided to try the medicine in person and bought an American brand NMN product online.
"It's been the fourth day, and I don't feel anything for the time being." Yao Yuan said.
Nevertheless, the "Pandora's Box" of "longevity medicine" has been opened. "Li Ka-shing and these celebrities are all eating and investing." "We are celebrity endorsements. Old customers will pick up goods in two or three groups and introduce many new customers." On July 23, NMN named Winnard Sales staff continue to recommend the company's NMN products to the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter, which can delay aging, Li Ka-shing's investment, and celebrities have become the selling point of the product.
There is a hidden corner behind the "magic" medicinal effect. The reporter learned from an interview that NMN, the core material of "longevity medicine", is widely sold in China, but its safety and effectiveness have not been recognized in China. Domestically produced raw materials, packaged abroad into health products, NMN products are being promoted to domestic new favorites through cross-border e-commerce.
Export to domestic sales?
Domestic raw materials are 20,000 yuan/kg, and they are sold at sky-high prices per gram after being "gilded" abroad
The scientific name of NMN is "β-nicotinamide mononucleotide", and research results have shown that it can produce an "age-inverse" effect on mice, and it is a "longevity medicine" that opened the curtain of its popularity in the market.
At the beginning of this month, the US subsidiary of the listed company Jindawei launched an enhanced NMN product branded as Doctor's Best, 60 vegetarian capsules per bottle, each containing 320mg of NMN content. However, the content of a bottle of NMN is only 9.6 grams. After Jindawei puts on the label of "Starting a Journey Against Age", the original price of the product is as high as RMB 2,999 per bottle.
On July 21, the Shell Finance reporter learned that this product has been out of stock, and the pre-sale mode is now open. The price after pre-sale is 1499 yuan per bottle.
Shell Finance reporters searched on major e-commerce platforms and found that most of the current specifications of NMN products are 150mg*60 tablets, and the dosage is one month, but the price is as high as 1,500 yuan a bottle, and some brands exceed 2,000 yuan.
Is this kind of NMN products called "longevity medicine" really worth such a high price? The Shell Finance reporter found that NMN raw materials can be purchased on multiple platforms such as Baidu Aibuying, Alibaba, and China Merchants. Most of them are priced between 12,000 yuan/kg and 25,000/kg.
Recently, the Shell Finance reporter contacted a number of NMN raw material sellers on the grounds of purchasing raw materials. Among them, Zhong Kai (a pseudonym), a salesperson from Guangzhou Hongyin Biotechnology Co., Ltd., told the reporter that the company currently has two NMN raw materials, one It is produced by chemical synthesis, and one is produced by enzymatic method. The price of NMN raw material produced by enzymatic method is 20,000 yuan/kg.
"Those foreign NMN products are this (raw material)", Zhong Kai said, most of the company's NMN raw materials are sold domestically, and some are sold abroad. After foreign factories process NMN health products, they are then sold domestically by cross-border e-commerce. market.
Since then, reporters have seen on multiple platforms such as Baidu Aibuying that most of the NMN raw materials for the enzymatic process are around 20,000 yuan. The raw materials are all white powder, and there are bags ranging from hundreds of grams to large-capacity barrels. Installed.
Through communication with a number of NMN raw material suppliers, the reporter found that buying NMN raw materials in China and then packaging them abroad to become NMN capsule products, and finally flowing into the domestic market through cross-border e-commerce is currently the most common and legal mode of operation.
"You go to see a lot of raw material manufacturers that import NMN products, all of them are domestic," said an NMN supplier.
"Longevity medicine" seems mysterious, but the ingredients are not rare and expensive. The reporter noticed that every two capsules of Jindawei's NMN products contain 320mg of NMN, 500mg of resveratrol, 200mg of rhodiola extract, and 50mg of American ginseng extract. Trading platforms such as Baidu Aibuying show that resveratrol (grape skin extract) is priced at around 1,500 yuan/kg, while the price of rhodiola extract varies greatly depending on the content, ranging from tens of yuan per kilogram It ranges from one thousand yuan per kilogram. In addition, a raw material of American ginseng extract is sold at 260 yuan/kg.
Raw materials priced in kilograms, packaged into health products, have sold "sky prices" in mg.
In fact, not every NMN product mentions other formulations. On July 27, a reporter from Shell Finance and Economics found on the sales information of the NMN product Amoyin Jingdong flagship store under Gene Harbor that the packaging specification of the product was 150mg*60 capsules, and each capsule contained 150mg of high-purity NMN. This means that the capsule of Gene Harbor is likely to contain NMN.
The product information introduction of Ai Mu Yin also mentioned that the price of 500 mg of NMN raw material with a purity of more than 95% on the well-known foreign website Sigma-Aldrich is still 11,785 yuan.
However, the reporter has noticed that Gene Harbor has already deployed raw material production in China very early. According to the prospectus of the proposed IPO company Kangpeng Technology, the company's subsidiary Shanghai Wansu was commissioned by Shanghai Nine, a subsidiary of Geneport, to be responsible for the auxiliary processing of some NMN procedures. In July this year, Gene Harbor announced that it had successfully built the world's largest NMN raw material production plant in China.
Behind the scenes
Multi-brand agent recruitment does not depend on qualifications, the price is 2200 yuan / bottle can be 980 yuan to get the goods
As a new resource, after NMN went abroad to become a high-end health product, its attention has shifted to the country and regarded it as a golden zone. On July 24, the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter searched for NMN investment agents and found that many brands from the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and other places were recruiting NMN domestic agents.
On July 23 and 24, the reporter contacted multiple NMN brands to inquire about product investment agency. An NMN salesperson called the Winard brand told reporters that generally one can purchase 50 bottles of products at a time to become a wholesale customer, that is, become an agent of the brand.
"Take 500 bottles", the salesperson's WeChat Moments posted screenshots of chat records of some agents getting goods.
The staff member said that as long as reporters have customer channels, they can sell in offline physical stores, Taobao, and WeChat business platforms. The normal selling price of the company's NMN products is 2200 yuan per bottle, and the agent can get the goods at a price of 980 yuan per bottle.
"There is no problem where you go to sell, and it has no effect on our official website." "Some offline agents will hold meetings with consumers to introduce how good the products are." The staff told reporters.
It is worth noting that this brand does not care whether the sales agent is qualified or not, and the reporter later contacted multiple NMN overseas sales brands and found that this phenomenon is widespread.
On July 24, a staff member with the brand of McKinreal told reporters that the company also recruited agents. If the agents with lower sales volume can only exist as "buying agents" in the early stage, they do not need qualifications. But if you want to formally sign a contract to become a real sales agent, you need to have a food business license qualification. After introducing the sales of the brand in detail, the staff of McKin Real said that the company is only recruiting agents online because the sales volume is too good. Now the goods in overseas warehouses have increased from more than 20,000 bottles to about 2,000 bottles.
The reporter saw on JD International that the NMN product under McKinreal's is 2580 yuan a bottle. "If we are an offline agent, we can only give you 50 bottles," said the above-mentioned staff member.
The ingredients are crazy
Suppliers start low-price "direct supply" business, customizable capsules can also be sold under OEM
NMN products have quietly become synonymous with "reverse aging" and "longevity" in people's mouths, and the barbaric growth of the market has gradually emerged.
The reporter saw on some domestic chemical raw material trading platforms that the molecular formula of NMN is C11H15N2O8P and the CAS number is 1094-61-7. In the product details of some NMN raw materials, the scope of NMN is not clearly classified. However, some suppliers label NMN raw materials as "food additives" or categories such as "food grade" and "nutrition enhancers". The reporter did not retrieve the substance in the "GB 2760-2014 Standard for the Use of Food Additives".
"It (NMN) is nothing in the country." On July 24, Ms. Huang, an NMN supplier, told reporters that adding NMN to products sold legally and compliantly in China is also a non-compliant behavior. “It’s not acceptable to sell it and reflect (label) it. It (NMN) is an unlicensed product and is generally used as a dietary supplement abroad. It cannot be used as a product in China, but only as a raw material for production.”
On July 24, a reagent distributor reminded reporters that the purchase of NMN can only be used for testing and production purposes, and not for other purposes. Nevertheless, some raw material manufacturers have long had their own business experience: some directly divide NMN raw materials into small packages and sell them to consumers for consumption, and some can even help customers process them into capsules for OEM sales.
“Most of the self-made (NMN capsule products) are made by synthetic processes, mainly because they are cheap.” Zhong Kai told reporters that his factory can produce 5 tons of NMN raw materials per year. If you want to directly process and fill into capsules, One kilogram of NMN only costs a few hundred yuan for processing, and any trademark provided by the reporter can be affixed.
Knowing that the reporter wants to process and sell NMN products in China, Zhong Kai said that the human body intake of this product is 0.2 to 0.5 grams. "There are 0.3, 0.5 capsule shells, you can fill them directly, no need to prepare them. Other things, usually filled to 0.5 capsules, eat once a day, one capsule at a time."
The reporter's investigation found that there are not a few factories that can process capsules on behalf of them. Some suppliers remind reporters that they will not accept orders for such agents because of legal risks. However, individuals will not interfere in where and how to process NMN raw materials after they buy them.
Substitution processing is just the tip of the iceberg in the chaos of NMN products.
On July 24, a reporter from Shell Finance and Economics saw in a Taobao store named "Jiangsu Xiaofei Biotechnology" that a bottle of NMN products on sale contained 20 to 500 capsules, and the price was 28 yuan. /Bottle to 360 yuan/bottle.
The "Jiangsu Xiaofei Biotechnology" shop sells filled NMN capsules.
Each capsule in this product contains 0.5g of NMN raw material. The product picture sent by the customer service staff shows that the NMN raw material is filled in the capsule and packaged in a round can. The shelf life is two years. The production license number is displayed as "SC12731011200552 "The manufacturer is shown as Jiangsu Xiaofei Biological Technology Co., Ltd.
The reporter called the contact information left on the bottled product. The staff said that the factory mainly produces enzymatic NMN raw materials. "Generally, there are more capsules, which are convenient to take. As much as you require (capsule specifications), the size can be as large as possible."
It is worth noting that such sellers are fake companies. The reporter searched the China QS website for the above production license, but there was no result. Platforms such as the National Enterprise Information Disclosure System and Enterprise Check have not yet retrieved any records about "Jiangsu Xiaofei Biotechnology Co., Ltd.".
In addition, on the Alibaba wholesale website, the stores of Guangzhou Hongcheng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Jinjing Chemical Co., Ltd. all have 10g/bottle of NMN raw material powder on sale. When the reporter asked about how to use Guangzhou Hongcheng Bio-NMN raw material powder, the customer service replied "twice a day, half a spoon once, before meals".
Many consumers in this store have shared their unique experiences after taking it, including "the body reacts like a fever after eating."
A raw material product containing 10g of NMN was purchased by 5 consumers in less than 24 hours.
Shi Lichen, founder of Beijing Dingchen Medical Management Consulting Center, told the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter that according to China’s regulations, NMN is a new resource. To be approved as a health product in China, it must undergo clinical trials. There is currently no NMN product in China. It is officially approved for listing, and it will be very difficult for the product to be approved for listing in China in the future.
Shi Lichen told reporters that at present, the US FDA only recognizes the safety of NMN and does not endorse the effectiveness of NMN. "Private filling (NMN raw materials) must be a problem with the sale, the state has not approved such products." Shi Lichen said.
Beijing News Shell Finance reporter Li Yunqi editor Wang Jinyu proofreading Zhang Yanjun