Song Liang, an industry expert interviewed in the 2018 Chinese Diary Industry Capital Forum, believes that the upgrading of dairy industry consumption will be carried out in two steps. The first step is the upgrading of consumers, which includes two aspects: the upgrading of consumer concepts and consumer behavior. The second step is the upgrading of product structure brought by consumption upgrade. Freshness itself is no longer a product function. Instead, it is more of a specific consumption pursuit, which refers to the pursuit of returning to original and healthiness.

And in the future development of the dairy market segment, nutritional health may become the new blue sea. Song Liang believes that the dairy product market can be segmented by 2 methods: in depth subdivision and shallow subdivision. For the Chinese dairy market, shallow segmentation is seen more often. Low threshold and less strong competitiveness make it easy to be crushed by the latecomers. Competitiveness still needs in-depth development.

Song Liang analyzed that, in the field of dairy products segmentation, deep segmentation reflects the endowment and resource of an enterprise. And the horizontal subdivision mode in the deep subdivision may provide many milk enterprises with new opportunities. In his view, in the future development of dairy enterprises, professional adult nutrition and health will become a new focus.

Meanwhile, the pace of traditional dairy companies acquiring overseas nutrition and health companies has been accelerating. In April 2017, Beingmate and the concerted action persons finished the completed delivery of the equity acquisition of American life tech company SCL. In November 2017, Feihe dairy completed the acquisition of VITAMIN WORLD, an American nutrition and health product company for 28 million US dollars.

Last year, Biostime was officially renamed H&H International Holdings Limited (hereinafter referred to as “H&H”). According to Zhu Hui, the company’s director of public relations in China, since the company purchased Swisse(an Australian natural health brand) in 2015, H&H’s business has expanded from infant nutrition products to household nutrition and health business.