Is milk really "overcapacity"? It's all because of too many imports.

Last weekend I went to the supermarket to buy some yogurt and found that the discount strength of milk was a little big, such as a certain brand of old yogurt, the retail price is less than 4 yuan, buy one get one free.

Coincidentally, according to a report by this newspaper yesterday, through a survey of the Ginza supermarket in Weifang, Shandong Province, it was found that in order to meet the peak consumption season of the Mid-Autumn Festival, dairy enterprises have made promotional advertisements: half-price sales, buy and send.

The promotion to welcome the Mid-Autumn Festival may be just a facade. Some analysts believe that a deeper reason is that the capacity of the domestic dairy industry has reached saturation after more than ten years of rapid development.

Let's take a look at a set of data. According to the 2015 China Rural Statistical Yearbook, the output of fresh milk in China was only 9.191 million tons and 4.694 million cows in 2000, but fifteen years later, the output of fresh milk in China reached 38.702 million tons and 15.07 million cows in 2015.

In 2015, China's output of dairy cows, fresh milk and dairy products ranked third in the world. At the current level of domestic demand, supply is basically saturated.

However, the import of milk powder is menacing, the impact on the industry can not be underestimated. The "China Dairy Industry quality report (2016)" compiled by the China Dairy Association points out that with the invasion of imported milk and the continuous decline of international milk prices, new hidden worries have emerged in China's dairy industry.

Customs statistics show that from January to June 2016, a total of 407800 tons of milk powder were imported, an increase of 18.6 percent over the same period last year, and 314000 tons of liquid milk, an increase of 77.55 percent over the same period last year.

So, is life easy for the relevant companies? Yili's statement in the 2016 semi-annual report may find some answers: at present, the growth of demand in the international dairy market is sluggish, the global dairy industry has overcapacity, and the price of raw milk supply has declined compared with the domestic raw milk price. foreign milk prices are more competitive, leading to the expansion of domestic dairy imports.

Then, can we understand that due to the surplus of the international dairy industry, a large number of dairy products hit the domestic market at low prices, resulting in a surplus of domestic raw milk production.

Of course, if China's dairy industry wants to develop, there are still many problems to be solved. As Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said at the Top 20 Summit and Revitalization Conference of China's Dairy Industry held a few days ago, China's dairy industry is still "large but not strong", with a low degree of standardization and high production costs. breeding and processing is disjointed, lack of stable interest connection mechanism, lack of loud brands, lack of competitive enterprise brands, and so on. Especially at present, affected by the impact of imports and sluggish consumption, we are faced with some outstanding problems, such as low milk prices, difficult sales, reduced income of dairy farmers, increased enterprise inventory and so on.