According to a recent online survey, 9 years after the melamine scandal, 50% of interviewees see improvement in the quality of Chinese milk and even 75% are confident in the future production. However, milk imports are still playing a huge role for Chinese demand, led by New Zealand and Australian producers.
In 2008, China has seen a huge quality scandal in dairy products, as chemical melamine was found in several dairy products. Since then, the government has implemented dozens of stricter rules and the quality of milk has improved significantly.
As a summary, the milk industry has been in the shadow of a safety scandal since 2008, when infant formula produced by Sanlu Group, then a leading dairy company in northern China's Hebei province, was found to contain the chemical melamine, which killed six babies and left thousands seriously ill.
The Dairy Association of China has said that 99.5 percent of dairy products checked in 2016 were up to standard and no illegal additives, such as melamine, had been detected in fresh milk for seven years.
Australia and New Zealand benefit most from demand
Australia and New Zealand are among the largest exporters of milk and other dairy products to China. Together with Germany, they are forming the top three import origins. Benefitting from highly accepted high-quality products by Chinese consumers and the geographical closer distance to China than Western milk producers, enterprises from these countries are making huge profits in the Chinese market.
One example for this is New Zealand’s A2 milk company, which is constantly investing in its marketing and product quality development to gain more market share in China. The enterprise sells fresh milk products through major cross-border e-commerce channels and 4,000 retail stores in China.
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