Request a Demo
On Mar. 18, 2021, China unveiled the new national food safety standards for infant formula1, which will be effective starting from February 22, 2023. To be specified, after the implementation date of the new standards, manufacturers can no longer produce infant formula products if they failed to obtain relevant recipe approvals. However, products produced before the implementation date can still be sold before its expiration date.
During the 2-year grace period, stakeholders are busy in preparing the registration applications as per the new national standard. For many recipes whose registration approvals were granted in 2017, due to the five-year validity period (many expire at the end of 2022), most of involved manufacturers choose to renew the registration status to extend the validity period first and then to alter the recipe based on the new national standard. As the implementation date is approaching, how’s the recipe registration going on at present?
Status Quo of Current Recipe Approvals
Until December 12, 2022, China has approved 1,589 infant formula recipes in total. Among the 1,589 recipes, 190 were annulled due to the limited recipe quota owned by manufacturers and expired validity period. For recipes whose registration approvals have expired, they will not be considered as “annulled” until corresponding status is disclosed by the special food information query platform2. It is because they may still be valid, e.g., their application for alteration or renewal is still under evaluation. Therefore, in this analysis article, the aforementioned recipes are not included in the 190 annulled recipes.
Among the valid recipes, 540 remain unchanged, 640 granted the renewal registration under the old national standard, and only 219 registered according to the coming new standard.
A Closer Look at Recipes Registered Under New Standards
As all recipes registered as per the old standards will become invalid after February 22, 2023, in the following part, a detailed analysis focuses on the 219 recipes registered under new national standards. Most of them are still with the name of old recipes.
By Country
Among the 219 recipes, 91% are from local manufacturers in China, including the manufacturers established by overseas players. The rest are from Ireland, Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland. Taking Nestlé as an example, 15 recipes of it are produced in China, while 13 recipes whose registration were applied by manufacturers in other countries.
By Group
Top five groups that own the most registered recipes are Firmus/Feihe, Junlebao, Nestlé, Yili and Wondersun Dairy. It is worth mentioning that Firmus has an extraordinary share of 45 recipes registered based on the new national standard.
By Milk Species
Divided by milk species, 190 recipes are from cow milk, and 29 are from goat or sheep milk. Regarding the goat or sheep recipes, 9 are from Yatai Dairy; 6 from Eurbest Dairy and Firmus, respectively; 3 from Yili and Yeeper Dairy, respectively; and 2 from Junlebao.
Up until Dec 12, 2022, around 135 manufacturers haven’t registered recipe as per the new standard. But around 90 of them have already got their old recipes renewed under the old national standard. More recipes are expected to be registered under the new standard as the implementation date is approaching. Stay tuned with ChemLinked.
Please note: the recipe data analyzed in this article may be slightly different from the actual data due to manual collection, calculation and analysis. Data in the official query platform2 shall prevail. You may also check ChemLinked’s food-list Chinese Mainland: Infant Formula Recipe Registration3 for details.
We provide full-scale global food market entry services (including product registration, ingredient review, regulatory consultation, customized training, market research, branding strategy). Please contact us to discuss how we can help you by 
