Vegetable Protein Leads the Way of a New Health Fashion with Rapid Market Growth

Along with people's pursuit of life quality and increasing demands on health, nutrition and a healthy diet becomes more significant than good taste, which will direct consumption upgrade of the drinks industry toward nutritional and healthy functions in the future, a transformation from “good to drink” to “drink well.” Compared with other beverages, vegetable protein beverage has obvious advantages: a better nutrition structure and guaranteed source than animal protein. For these reasons, people favor low-fat and cholesterol-free plant protein resources.

This is reflected in the development trend of the beverage industry. Vegetable protein drink is the fastest-growing industry of all sub-sectors of drink industries since 2007, generating a revenue of ¥121.72 billion in 2016, with a CAGR of 24.5% in 2007-2016 and a 8.79% increase in the share of beverage industry to 18.69%, according to Analysis Report on 2017-2022 Market Demand and Investment Planning of Vegetable Protein Beverage Industry in China released by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute.

As carbonated beverage and dairy drink industries run into the bottleneck with problems of outdated product varieties, weak performance of channels and frequent security issues, the beverage market keeps developing toward “healthy” drinks such as vegetable protein drink, tea and water, etc. The vegetable protein beverage industry is expected to maintain a growth of more than 20% in the next few years, taking the lead in the entire beverage manufacturing market. The market size of vegetable protein drink is estimated to reach ¥258.3 billion in 2020, a continuous rise in the share of beverage industry to 24.2%.

Table1: comparisons of beverage industry subdivisions (unit: 100 million yuan, %)

Vegetable protein Drink Industry Sees Fierce Competition

Subdivision Industry Leading Enterprises Develop into Comprehensive Enterprises

From the perspective of the competition, the Chinese vegetable protein drink industry has a low concentration in the overall aspect but a high concentration in subdivisions. At present, Yangyuan Drinks is the largest vegetable protein drink company with a market share of 8.34% in the country, BlueSword, Yinlu Group, Coconut Palm and Chengde Lulu ranked from number two to number five respectively, with a total share of less than 3.5% in the market. The top 10 enterprises in the vegetable protein drink market account for a small share of 24.43% of the industry.

Table 2: market structure of vegetable protein drinks (unit: 100 million yuan, ton, %)

However, from the perspective of industry subdivisions, such as almond milk, coconut juice, walnut milk and others, Coconut Palm "coconut juice," Lulu "almond milk," Yangyuan "Six Walnuts Milk," Yinlu "peanut milk" and other leading brands occupy more than half of the shares each.