The scale of China's complementary food industry grows, and domestic enterprises have great potential for development.

Baby's complementary food refers to that besides breast milk, the baby should also be given some solid objects. Baby food supplements include baby rice flour, mud lake food and other home-made foods.

Analysis of Industry Status

According to the data, with the improvement of domestic infant supplementary food technology and the continuous expansion of enterprise production capacity, it is expected that the output of the infant supplementary food industry in China will continue to maintain a fluctuating growth trend in the next few years. In 2018, the output of infant supplementary food in China will reach 132,400 tons, up 15.1% year on year, and the output of infant supplementary food market in China is expected to reach 203,300 tons by 2024.

With the improvement of domestic consumers' awareness of infant supplementary food and the development of domestic economy, the consumer group of infant supplementary food in China will continue to grow. The demand for infant supplementary food in China will reach 327,700 tons in 2018, and the market demand for infant supplementary food in China is expected to reach 555,700 tons by 2024.

In recent years, with the continuous improvement of residents' consumption ability and the deepening of scientific concept of child-rearing, the consumption scale of infant supplementary food industry in our country has continued to rise. The growth rate of market consumption in recent ten years has remained at about 20%, the market scale in 2018 is close to 30 billion yuan, and it is estimated that the market scale of infant supplementary food industry in our country will reach 43.623 billion yuan by 2024.

Judging from the composition of product consumption, cereal supplementary food is currently the main product category in infant supplementary food industry, accounting for about 55%; The current consumption of auxiliary snacks is about 25%. The consumption proportion of complementary food and complementary food nutrition supplements is about 10%.

Factors Affecting Industry Development

Judging from the overall development of China's infant complementary food industry in the past ten years, the compound growth rate from 2008 to 2018 is about 19%, strictly speaking, the market growth rate is not very fast. According to expert analysis, the following two factors have contributed to the limited growth of complementary foods for infants in China in the past decade:

First, in terms of consumption habits, Chinese people's cognition of complementary foods for infants and young children mainly stays in the home-made style, and their acceptance of such complementary foods as professional nutritious rice noodles is not high.

Second, in terms of product supply, in a long period of time, the number of infant supplementary food manufacturers in China is relatively small, and the brand awareness is not high. The domestic market is basically monopolized by international brands such as Garbo, Heinz and Shimei. Especially after the melamine incident in domestic milk powder, the domestic brands in the infant food industry as a whole have been affected, which has also brought adverse effects on the development of infant supplementary food enterprises in China.

Industry consumption trend

Since 2017, China has formulated a series of policies for the supervision of infant supplementary food industry, especially since 2018, policies and regulations such as "Announcement on Issuing Temporary Limit Value of Cadmium in Infant Cereal Supplementary Food", "Provisions on Further Strengthening Supervision of Infant Cereal Supplementary Food", "Measures for the Record Management of Infant Formula Food (Draft for Comments)" and other policies and regulations have been issued successively to assist the development of the industry, and 2018 is called the "First Year of Infant Supplementary Food Industry".

Since the full liberalization of the two-child policy in 2016, the number of new births in the country has surged, increasing by 1.31 million compared with 2015. The policy effect is gradually showing. With the official implementation of the "comprehensive two-child" policy, China's annual birth population will grow steadily. The increase in the birth population will also bring potential demand for supplementary food for infants.

From the current attention of Chinese consumers to infant complementary food products, the attention of nutritional ingredients and product safety are 76.8% and 65% respectively, which are the two points with the highest attention. Secondly, whether the baby likes it or not; The attention of users' public praise and brand awareness is also above 20%, while the attention to price and packaging is not so much. Therefore, the nutrition and safety of products are the most important points for enterprises in the infant food industry in China. Although the market share of foreign brands in the infant food industry in China is relatively high at present, due to the large market space, the opportunities for domestic enterprises in the future are still relatively large.

In addition to the promotion of policies, the promotion of residents' consumption upgrading and the change of parenting concepts are also important driving factors for the future development of China's infant complementary food industry. At present, the market penetration rate of infant supplementary food in China is about 20%. Even if the future infant birth is less than expected, with the continuous improvement of the penetration rate, the infant supplementary food industry in China still has a large room for development.