中国农垦乳业联盟专家组长宋亮向财联社记者表示：“国内整体奶类标准已经较为完善，诸如液态奶、常温奶、巴氏奶、酸奶等等很早就有了标准，这方面主要针对新品类超巴奶，要从工艺、温度等方面做进一步细分。”① In Document No. 1 of 2024, the dairy industry proposed “improving liquid milk standards, standardizing reconstituted milk labeling, and promoting fresh milk consumption”; ② A Financial Federation reporter learned in an interview that there is still a lot of room for future consumption growth of low-temperature milk, and the consumption of low-temperature milk, especially ultra-high-temperature milk, is growing at an obvious rate.
Financial Services Association, Feb. 3 (Reporter Zhang Chenjing) The domestic dairy market is currently undergoing a transition period from room temperature milk to low temperature milk, and low temperature milk has become a new competitive arena for dairy companies. On February 3, Xinhua News Agency was authorized to issue “Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Studying and Using the Experience of the “Thousand Villages Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Remediation” project to effectively promote comprehensive rural revitalization. “Improving standards and promoting fresh milk consumption” became the key word for the 2024 dairy industry.
Compared with Document No. 1 of 2023, the policy direction for the dairy industry in 2024 was changed from “accelerating the expansion of beef, lamb and dairy production and promoting pilot demonstration of the transformation and upgrading of grassland animal husbandry” to “improving liquid milk standards, standardizing reconstituted milk labeling, and promoting fresh milk consumption”.
Song Liang, head of the expert group of the China Agricultural Reclamation Dairy Industry Alliance, told the Financial Federation reporter: “The overall domestic milk standards have been improved. Such as liquid milk, room temperature milk, pasteurized milk, yogurt, etc., have had standards for a long time. This aspect mainly targets new types of ultra-pure milk, and further segmentation is needed in terms of process and temperature.”
According to information, dairy products with a sterilization process between pasteurized milk (commonly known as fresh milk) and ultra-high temperature sterilized milk (commonly known as room temperature milk) generally label high-temperature sterilized milk on the outer packaging, commonly known in the industry as “ultra-pasteurized milk.”
It is worth mentioning that in this document No. 1, it is proposed to promote fresh milk consumption. Under the current trend of loose upstream raw milk supply, rising downstream demand is critical to the development of the dairy industry. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, domestic milk production increased by more than 6% for four consecutive years. In 2023, China's total raw milk production was 41.97 million tons, up 6.7% year on year. From January to December 2023, dairy production was 305.46 million tons, up 3.1% year on year.
At the same time, the increase in domestic raw milk supply curbs imports of dairy products. According to customs information, in 2023, China imported a total of 2.881 million tons of various dairy products, a decrease of 12% over the previous year. Imported dairy products equivalent to 17.18 million tons of fresh milk, a decrease of 10.4% over the previous year.
Song Liang further said that there is still a lot of room for growth in consumption of low-temperature milk in the future. Although the promotion of milk products has been increasing in the past two years, judging from the consumption volume, the growth rate of low-temperature milk, especially ultra-cheap milk, is very obvious.
People from companies such as New Dairy (002946.SZ) and Yantang Dairy (002732.SZ) told the Financial Federation reporter that judging from the company's performance, they intuitively feel that overall consumption of dairy products in 2023 was higher than in 2022. New Dairy said that low-temperature milk is still the mainstream product for market consumption. With the development of cold chain logistics construction and the improvement of dairy production technology, the future growth of low-temperature dairy products will have a stronger driving force.
The price of raw milk in China continued to fall in 2023. As of January 24, the average price of fresh milk in 10 major producing provinces, including Inner Mongolia and Hebei, was 3.64 yuan/kg, down 11.0% year on year. The Dongxing Securities Research Report shows that the excess milk situation will gradually ease. Prices of dairy products will fluctuate mainly at a low level in 2024, and whether they can recover mainly depends on the degree of improvement in demand.
The decline in raw milk prices will help dairy companies improve their gross profit. People from Sunshine Dairy (001318.SZ) said that raw milk supply companies have signed long-term contracts, and some are self-supplied milk sources. The drop in raw milk prices can help increase the company's product gross profit.