This year's "chills" of the cold drink giants began earlier and more intensely. Recently, New Dairy, a listed company under New Hope, revealed that it has laid out its cold drink ice cream business, mainly in East China. This may just be the beginning. Since the overall scale of New Dairy ranks in the forefront of regional dairy enterprises, and backed by such a big backer as New Hope Group, it is also determined that it will not be settled in one corner. However, looking at the cold drink industry, after the fancy new products that once won with traffic briefly satisfied consumers' novel experience, consumers' preferences for ice cream gradually returned to rationality. Can the new dairy industry that joins the "ice battlefield" tell a new story? After all, the consumer market is not lacking in competitors.
Ten billion mark
"New Hope is actually out of ice cream! Ice cream made from pure milk. A blogger posted and posted a picture in Xiaohongshu, and the picture is New Dairy's new ice cream product "Cocoa Crumble".
Using a familiar product analogy, New Dairy's "Crumble Cocoa" has similarities to Luxue's Menglong Cappuccino flavored ice cream. The net content is about 65 grams, and the raw materials are also imported chocolate, the difference is that "cocoa crumbs" emphasizes the addition of 20% raw milk. In terms of price, "cocoa broken" is priced at 6 yuan / stick, and the price of 16 sticks on the official website of Menglong Tmall is 189 yuan, equivalent to 11.8 yuan / piece.
Cold ice cream is a new business that New Dairy has just laid out. In early May 2023, at the performance briefing held by New Dairy Co., Ltd., Xi Gang, chairman of New Dairy Co., Ltd., Zhu Chuan, president of New Dairy Co., Ltd., Zheng Shifeng, secretary of the board of directors and other senior executives all attended. When asked by investors whether to deploy cold ice cream, New Dairy gave an affirmative answer, emphasizing that it mainly started sales in eastern China, with a small scale but steady revenue growth.
Regarding why he chose to take the lead in the layout in East China and what plans and goals he had for the year, the reporter of Beijing Business Daily asked the relevant person in charge of New Dairy, but did not receive a reply as of press time.
According to a number of industry insiders close to the new dairy industry analyzed to the Beijing Business Daily reporter, there may be three reasons why the new dairy industry took the lead in laying out East China, "First, the cold drink ice cream of the new dairy industry takes the high-end route, and it has the most market in East China, where the economic conditions are better; Second, the cold chain system of New Dairy has been relatively mature in East China; Third, as a high-end drink or ice product, if it can be made in the East China market, it is relatively easy to promote it to other places."
Continuous growth in performance, or the confidence of New Dairy to develop new business of cold drink ice cream. In 2022, the total revenue of New Dairy exceeded the 15 billion yuan mark for the first time, of which low-temperature fresh milk and low-temperature yogurt outperformed the industry performance, low-temperature fresh milk achieved a year-on-year growth of more than 10%, and the national market share exceeded <>%, second only to Bright Dairy and Sanyuan Dairy. The new business of New Dairy has entered East China, the base of Bright Dairy, and has the tendency to challenge the "first brother" of low-temperature fresh milk.
The strong layout of the new dairy industry is also reflected in the total market capitalization. As of the close of trading on May 2023, 5, the total market value of New Dairy was 24.140 billion yuan, only 13.153 billion yuan less than the 3.13 billion yuan of low-temperature fresh milk "Yige" Bright Dairy.
Back to basics
6 yuan a piece of "cacao crumbles" is not cheap in the domestic ice cream market. New Dairy's intention is clear, to open up the market through mid-to-high-end products. But there are more and more players in this market, including Zhongxuegao who was labeled as an "ice cream assassin" and quickly out of the circle, and then the crossover giant Moutai Ice Cream's "Internet celebrity ice cream" became a sought-after product.
Song Liang, an independent dairy analyst, believes that "the expansion of the ice cream business by New Dairy is a new profit point and business unit. Although the ice cream market is more competitive, the gross profit margin is quite high, and the average gross profit margin of ice cream exceeds 50%, and there is a lot of room in the future." According to the "China Ice Cream and Ice Cream Industry Trend Report" released by the Green Agriculture and Food Nutrition Professional Committee of China Green Food Association, China's ice cream industry has maintained high growth in recent years, and the market size reached 2021 billion yuan in 1600, an increase of 130 billion yuan over the previous year, a year-on-year increase of 8.84%.
Song Liang further said that the personalized demand for ice products is more obvious, Yili, Mengniu and Guangming have been laid out in the market for many years, and if the new dairy industry wants to seize a certain market share, it may need to make more efforts in terms of product taste, novel form, and flexible channels.
In fact, the mid-to-high-end track that New Dairy is looking at is not so smooth. After briefly satisfying consumers' novel experience with fancy new products that once won with traffic, consumers' consumption of ice cream gradually returned to rationality. A survey study by CPRC found that in 2022, netizens will accept a single ice cream price of 3 yuan to 5 yuan, accounting for 37%; Accept the price range of 5 yuan to 10 yuan, accounting for 33.9%; 10.20% accepted a price range of $16 to $3; 1% accept the price range of 3 yuan to 11 yuan; Only 20.1% accept prices of 8 yuan and above. Taste and price are becoming key factors in brand success, with more than <>% of consumers surveyed believing that the premium for ice cream is too high.
On the other hand, to deploy cold ice cream, the new dairy industry needs to face the existing giants in the market. At present, the first camp composed of Helu Xue, Nestle, Mengniu and Yili occupies more than 50% of the national share, and Guangming, Honbaolai, Deshi and TechnoAlpin constitute the second camp, occupying a high market share in the region and a high market concentration.
Taking Mengniu and Yili as examples, in 2022, they will achieve ice product revenue of 56.90 billion yuan and 10 billion yuan respectively, and the total revenue of New Dairy has just exceeded <> billion yuan that year. Ice products are only a sub-category of Mengniu and Yili, accounting for less than <>% of the company's total revenue that year. It is difficult for New Dairy to challenge the status of the head brand.
However, Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, is more optimistic about the layout of the new dairy industry, "The new dairy industry enters the cold drink ice cream track, with 'the right time and place', because the strength of the new dairy industry lies in the layout of the entire industrial chain and urban agglomeration, which has both the integrity advantage of the industrial chain and the brand effect of low-temperature fresh food, forming a scale advantage."
Beijing Business Daily reporter Kong Wenxie