The domestic dairy market has entered a "difficult year".

The coming of the cold winter of the dairy industry is not only reflected in the decline in the financial figures of the major dairy enterprises, the obvious slowdown in the growth rate of various categories in the industry also shows the difficulties faced by the domestic dairy market in 2015. Third-party data show that compared with 2014, the growth rate of dairy sales from January to September 2015 was lower than that in the same period last year, both in terms of total volume and overall category growth.

Take the main liquid milk market in the industry as an example, the sales of liquid milk reached 102.4 billion yuan in the first three quarters of this year, and the overall category maintained a growth of 5%. In the same period in 2014, however, sales of liquid milk grew by 12.8% year-on-year, falling to less than half this year. In terms of channels, it is worth noting that the sales of convenience stores increased by 11.9% compared with the same period last year, which is already ahead of the growth rate of supermarkets and hypermarkets, which also provides a reference for the channel reform of dairy enterprises.

The performance of each dairy product subdivision is also different. For example, compared with the same period last year, room temperature yogurt, fresh yogurt and lactic acid bacteria drinks showed positive growth in the first three quarters of this year, of which room temperature yogurt had the highest growth rate of 106.3%. Although this figure is lower than the 108.9% growth in the same period last year, it is much higher than the positive growth of 10.5% of fresh yogurt and 7.4% of lactobacillus beverages. Industry insiders believe that the involvement of several leading dairy enterprises will quickly expand the category of room temperature yogurt, and will attract more enterprises to follow up in the future.

In addition to the growth of the above categories, normal temperature liquid milk, sour milk and low-temperature fresh milk showed negative growth. Among the three, it is particularly obvious that cold fresh milk still grew by 25.2% in the same period last year, but changed by-10.2% in the first three quarters of this year. In this regard, industry insiders believe that this is related to the high base and the weak consumption environment of dairy products as a result of the substantial growth of low-temperature liquid milk last year. Although there has been negative growth this year, according to industry insiders, low-temperature liquid milk will experience expansive growth in the future.

Although each segment of dairy products has its own advantages, the growth rate of all categories has slowed down, which is a further indication of the obvious weakness of dairy consumption this year. In addition, the shift of consumer attention to other categories and overseas has also split the domestic dairy market. Earlier, Song Kungang, honorary chairman of the China Dairy Industry Association, said that the domestic dairy market will be more affected by the international market in the future, and it is urgent for enterprises to accelerate the pace of product restructuring.