Status Quo of China’s Infant Formula Recipe Registration, up until 2022 H1

As revealed by China’s “Query Platform for Special Foods”, State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) approved the registration of 62 infant formula recipes in H1 2022. Among them, 19 (31%) are goat milk recipes. Divided by place of origin, 12 (19%) of the 62 recipes are imported recipes from Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The rest are from China.

As for the recipe quantity by group company, in H1 2022, Junlebao, Ausnutria and Firmus are with the most approved recipes. Based on the data listed below, Feihe (also called “Firmus”) is now working on the layout of goat milk products. In 2021, it acquired a goat milk company called “Xiaoyang Milk”. With the recipes newly approved in 2022, Feihe now has 15 goat infant formula recipes. In addition, we shall pay attention that in H1 2022, Yili became the controlling shareholder of Ausnutria. Mead Johnson was reported to acquire a goat milk company called “Milk Goat”. Danone reached a strategy cooperation with Eurbest Dairy. The latter obtained 6 recipe approvals in H1 2022.

An Overview of the Total Infant Formula Recipe Registration

Up until now, China has approved 1,465 recipes. Due to the validity of recipe approvals, the adjustment of recipes, and the limitation of recipe quotas (each enterprise in principle shall not have more than 3 series of infant formula with 9 product recipes), China’s infant formula market currently has 1,371 valid recipes.

• By place of origin

Among the 1,371 valid recipes, 338 of them (25%) are imported recipes. Most of them are from New Zealand, the Netherlands, Korea, France and Australia.

• By milk species

Among the 1,371 valid recipes, cow milk is still the largest milk species, followed by goat milk and yak milk. Moreover, around 9% of the cow milk are organic recipes (93).

• By group company

Divided by group company, infant formula recipes are mostly owned by Feihe, Beingmate, Mengniu, etc.

To take a further look at the product layout of the top 10 groups, almost every group has at least two production lines.

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On March 18, 2021, three new national food safety standards for infants formula were published by China’s authority, which will be effective starting from Feb 22, 2023. Up until now, some enterprises have already got the recipe approvals as per the new GB standards.

With rich project experience, ChemLinked provides a series of services, including infant formula recipe registration, GACC food manufacturer registration, and market research in food industry.

***Notes: The recipe data analyzed in this article may be slightly different with the actual data due to manual analysis and calculation. Data on SAMR’s official website shall prevail.

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