Chinese Probiotic Beverage Market Doubles in 3 Years

The past three years has seen China’s probiotic beverage market (specifically lactobacillus culture beverages) more than double in size. Between 2011 and 2014 China’s domestic market increased its commercial value trade value from 3.7 billion to 7.3 billion.

Yakult, originating from Japan, is still the market leader in probiotics beverages in China. To meet increasing demand Yakult announced it will construct its fourth production plant in China. It is notable that domestic brands such as Mengniu, Yili and Junlebao have also performed extremely well. However, according to industry insiders both overseas and domestic manufacturers depend on imported bacterial strains during production. China’s biotechnology R&D capacities have lagged behind the rate of its global counterparts and overall industry development which has stifled development of China’s domestic industry.

For the sales performance in terms of bottle size, the share of the small volumes (less than 120ml) which used to occupy half of the market has decreased slightly while those of the medium volumes (121-600ml) and the large volumes (more than 601ml) have shown an uptrend.