Pharmaceutical companies’ pan-consumption transformation focuses on the same source of medicine and food

"The bright moon, the clear breeze, and the lovesickness, the bright sun and the hundred grasses are also sentimental." When such a lyric depicts Kangmei Pharmaceutical (600518) in a TV commercial in a romantic way, Chinese medicine companies cannot help but wonder about their competitive strategies in the new era. Make people look at you.

How passionate is Baicao? It is vividly reflected in the pan-consumption transformation. The Ministry of Health recently stated that it is safe for healthy people to consume artificially grown ginseng according to the consumption amount. According to the "Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China" and the "New Resource Food Management Measures", ginseng (artificially grown) is approved as a new resource food. , the daily consumption should not exceed 3 grams. As soon as the news came out, *** Zixin Pharmaceutical, Yisheng Pharmaceutical

Industry insiders said that with the upgrading of social consumption levels, new resource foods of traditional Chinese medicine are expected to usher in new development space. At present, the traditional Chinese medicine industry, as the most traditional part of the strategic emerging industries, is not only optimistic about the potential to develop into modern traditional Chinese medicine, but also has a trend of cross-variety transformation and transformation towards comprehensive health. With "medicine and food coming from the same source" The new resource food of traditional Chinese medicine, which is the main brand, will become another powerful tool for the emerging traditional Chinese medicine industry.

Dual use of medicine and food increases demand

There are more than 80 items that are both medicines and foods in my country’s regulations, and there are more than 100 kinds of Chinese medicinal materials that can be used in health foods. my country is the world's largest ginseng producer. Before the 1990s, some ginseng products were allowed to be sold on the market as food. However, after 2002, ginseng was included in the "List of Items that Can be Used as Health Foods" and was limited to health care products. Food consumption range. This time ginseng has been approved as a new resource food, and consumption and demand are expected to increase.

Among A-share listed companies, Zixin Pharmaceutical, Yisheng Pharmaceutical, and Kangmei Pharmaceutical have the advantage of ginseng resources. However, when ginseng can only be used as medicine, the price of ginseng is affected by the supply and demand relationship and is unstable. The benefits are also unstable. As ginseng prices fluctuated, in mid-2012, Zixin Pharmaceutical's ginseng products achieved operating income of 112 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 53.69 yuan, and a net profit of 56.1598 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 49.61 yuan. However, Yisheng Pharmaceutical's Qingkailing Injection and Shengmai Injection were affected by the increase in prices of major raw materials such as red ginseng, and their gross profit margins declined.

A researcher in the pharmaceutical industry of a securities company said that my country is a traditional ginseng consumer, but its annual consumption is only more than 2,000 tons, and its export price is about 1/10 of South Korea. One of the important reasons is that Chinese ginseng is only It is used as medicine, and after South Korea purchases ginseng from Northeast China, it processes it into high-end consumer goods and sells it back to China at a high price.

According to reports, Changbai Mountain in Jilin is the largest ginseng producing area, accounting for 70% of the world's output. However, there are few leading domestic processing companies, lack of strong brands, nearly half of individual ginseng households, and deforestation. The method of carrying ginseng destroys the ecological environment and inhibits the growth and healthy development of the industry.

Cultivating leading enterprises in the ginseng industry has become one of the priorities of Jilin Province. As early as 2011, Jilin Province piloted the use of ginseng as medicine and food. Jilin Province's opinions on revitalizing the ginseng industry propose that it will support the development of leading enterprises by building standardized production bases. It plans to achieve an output value of 20 billion yuan in 2012, 40 billion yuan in 2015, and 100 billion yuan in 2020. Zixin Pharmaceutical, Yisheng Pharmaceutical and other enterprises received key support.

At the 8th China Jilin Northeast Asia Investment and Trade Expo held recently, some leading ginseng companies have seized the opportunity to seize the "medicine and food" market. Zixin Pharmaceutical launched the ginseng food There are dozens of varieties, including ginseng tea series, ginseng wine series, ginseng candy series, etc.

It is understood that ginseng fruit and vegetable enzyme is Zixin Pharmaceutical’s first “medicine and food” product, made from ginseng, vegetables and fruits; the company also produces ginseng, wolfberry and apple juice. Market participants are refreshed. Currently, Zixin Pharmaceutical is developing more than 160 kinds of ginseng foods, and ginseng biscuits, ginseng wine and ginseng tea are recognized by consumers.

A person from the Jilin Provincial Ginseng Engineering Technology Research Center said that allowing ginseng to enter food is what the ginseng community and ginseng farmers have been waiting for for many years. It will greatly promote the international competitiveness of China's ginseng industry and promote the revitalization of Jilin's ginseng industry.

The product extension opportunities brought by "medicine and food from the same origin" to traditional Chinese medicine companies are not limited to ginseng.

In February 2002, the Ministry of Health issued a list of items that can be used as health foods, including ginseng, ginseng leaves, and ginseng fruits, making them unable to enter the general food field. In addition, 110 items such as Panax notoginseng, Salvia miltiorrhiza, Schisandra chinensis, American ginseng, raw Polygonum multiflorum, aloe vera, motherwort, etc. were included, which restricted the application scope of these raw materials.

Once these medicinal materials are approved for "medicine and food use", they will greatly increase market demand. According to data from the Ministry of Health, there are as many as 87 kinds of items that are both food and medicine in my country, including cloves, yams, monk fruit, papaya, licorice, cassia seeds, poria, honeysuckle, wolfberry, mint, etc. Among them, some medicinal materials produce beverages or solid foods that have a broad market, such as papaya juice, licorice tea, cassia seed tea, Poria cake, Poria cake, etc., and are popular in the market.

Enterprises in cross-section areas compete

Faced with the market opportunity of "dual use of medicine and food", traditional Chinese medicine companies and food companies are ready to compete fiercely in the fields of food, beverages and other fields. Multinational companies have also coveted this market for a long time.

Looking at the new resource foods that have been officially produced by the Ministry of Health, we can see that many foods that are at the intersection of traditional Chinese medicine companies and food companies need to deal with fierce market competition.

In the field of cola alone, there are Shaolin Coke produced by China National Medicinal Materials Company and Kaifeng Traditional Chinese Medicine Factory, Tianfu Coke produced by Chongqing Beverage Factory and Sichuan Provincial Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Shanghai Coke produced by Shanghai Traditional Chinese Medicine No. 3 Factory. , Great Wall Coke produced by Zhangjiakou Great Wall Pharmaceutical Factory, China Coke produced by Hangzhou Limin Pharmaceutical Factory, and Tianli Beverage produced by Qinghai Sports Science Institute and Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Institute, etc. These products require both comparative advantages with traditional Chinese medicine companies and Need to grab the market share of beverage companies. It is worth noting that due to fierce market competition, some products eventually failed.

Among the listed traditional Chinese medicine companies, Kangbai and Longli Biotech also have new resource foods such as sunshine nutrient solution and xylo-oligosaccharide. Some powerful medical research institutions have begun to push the research and development of new traditional Chinese medicine resource foods to high-end and in-depth levels. For example, Beijing Fanhua Medical New Technology Research Institute was approved to produce Cordyceps sinensis polysaccharide nutrient solution, and CSPC Pharmaceutical Group was approved to produce vitality nutrient solution. All of them have strong R&D capabilities or marketing capabilities. Alliances between pharmaceutical companies and food companies have also surfaced. Lanzhou Kelin Biological Products Factory and Beijing Sibolian Green Food Company have cooperated to develop Cordyceps Cordyceps Essence and promote it through various channels.

Chinese herbal drinks are often considered to best embody the concept of "medicine and food come from the same source". Among them, Wanglaoji herbal tea, the most mature one, is a well-known leader in Chinese herbal drinks and has defeated Coca-Cola in the domestic market. , attracted many imitators.

Huachuang Securities Research stated that China’s beverage industry is an emerging industry that has developed since the reform and opening up. It is a development hotspot and new growth point in consumer goods. The development of functional drinks will further highlight the future potential of the beverage market. The traditional Chinese medicine beverage market, with herbal tea as the pioneer, will become more prosperous, and the Chinese herbal medicine beverage market will grow faster than the overall market, with sales expected to exceed 50 billion yuan in 2013.

The expanding market space is coveted by traditional Chinese medicine companies. At present, in the field of herbal tea, there are Guangzhou Pharmaceutical's Wanglaoji herbal tea, Dali Group's Heqizheng herbal tea, Guangzhou Jianshengtang herbal tea, Guangzhou Huangzhenlong herbal tea and Xiangxue Pharmaceutical's herbal tea. Some traditional Chinese medicine companies and food companies have also joined forces to expand the coverage of beverages with the help of new resource food concepts, such as the healthy germanium drinking liquid jointly developed by Changzhou Lijia Health Products Factory and Shanghai Smelting Plant Semiconductor Materials Branch, Shanghai Baoan Biotechnology Company and Zhejiang Province The Vitality King SOD beer jointly developed by Linping Brewery brings a touch of novelty to the market.

According to Li Qiong, deputy director of the Beijing Biotechnology and New Pharmaceutical Industry Promotion Center, high-growth and long-cycle products from traditional Chinese medicine companies are constantly emerging. At present, China’s elderly population exceeds 180 million, and traditional Chinese medicine health care The scale of the product market is rapidly expanding, and the industrial environment is becoming increasingly perfect. In the past 10 years, the consumption growth of the U.S. health industry has surged from US$200 billion to the current US$1 trillion. It is foreseeable that with the continuous growth of our country's national health awareness and health care consumption power, the development of traditional Chinese medicine derivatives represented by traditional Chinese medicine beverages will accelerate.

Competition behind the transformation has deepened

People from the China Institute of Food and Drug Control said that traditional Chinese medicine companies’ transformation into fast-moving consumer goods production has both traditional brand advantages and constraints from marketing models. According to reports, traditional Chinese medicine companies have strong R&D capabilities and high inherent brand market reputation, which can easily be transformed into competitive advantages for the company. However, the marketing and competition of fast-moving consumer goods are quite different from pharmaceutical sales. If traditional Chinese medicine companies suddenly enter the market, they may not be able to achieve rapid growth. .

Zixin Pharmaceutical has deep feelings about this. The company's 2012 interim report stated that as the company continues to launch new varieties of ginseng food, the increase in product categories and the expansion of overall production capacity will bring new challenges to the company's sales capabilities. The market launch methods, sales channels, and sales models of some products There are certain differences from the company's existing proprietary Chinese medicines, and whether sales can grow simultaneously is restricted by marketing investment and network construction. If the company cannot achieve competitive advantages in product quality, capital investment, sales strategy, etc., it will affect the company's operating income and overall performance.

Looking back at the changes in the traditional Chinese medicine derivatives industry over the past 20 years, we can find that food companies or daily chemical companies can often rely on accurate market judgment to seize opportunities before traditional Chinese medicine companies. As early as 1983, Zhonghua Traditional Chinese Medicine toothpaste came out, with sales reaching 12 million yuan that year. It was not until 2005 that Yunnan Baiyao toothpaste began to expand into the Chinese medicine toothpaste market. At the same time, Tianqi, Naisi, Liby, etc. also Rising with the concept of "Chinese herbal medicine", it has been fiercely competitive in the field of traditional Chinese medicine and daily chemicals. In 2005, a Nielsen survey found that the market share of traditional Chinese medicine toothpaste reached 50%.

Industry insiders believe that the market environment of traditional Chinese medicine companies is relatively closed. Drug prices are subject to policy control, drug bidding is controlled by policy, and drug advertising is prohibited by policy. Due to differences with other market environments, in When suddenly entering the fast-moving consumer goods market, the transformation of traditional Chinese medicine companies is often unsatisfactory in the short term.

In addition, the market positioning of the traditional Chinese medicine concept of products requires companies to make accurate judgments. Data from the Huachuang Securities Research Institute shows that there are 22 types of Chinese herbal medicines that can strengthen teeth, and the ingredients promoted in Chinese herbal toothpastes vary. The same is true in the field of beverages and food. Health food ingredients with immune-modulating effects include Ganoderma lucidum, American ginseng, ginseng, spirulina, lentinan, etc., and health food ingredients with sleep-improving effects include Acanthopanax senticosus, Schisandra chinensis, and melatonin. , Gastrodia elata, white peony root, etc., to name a few.

The health food products of large pharmaceutical companies such as Tongrentang, Taiji Group, China Resources Shuanghe, and Jiangzhong Pharmaceutical are constantly grabbing retail terminals. In addition, it is worth noting that due to factors such as drug price reductions, many pharmacies have begun to expand health food operations. With the change in residents’ consumption patterns and the strengthening of prevention concepts, Chinese medicinal materials such as honeysuckle, fat seaweed, and cassia have also begun to seize the tea market share. A fierce competition seems to be brewing.

More than 400 foreign-funded companies, including Wyeth, Ness, Amway, Sunrider, and Avon, have also continued to strengthen their presence in the Chinese health food market. Amway China’s sales in China reached 21 billion yuan in 2010 , of which health food accounts for 60%. Li Qiong introduced that these more than 400 foreign-funded companies have harvested about 40% of the domestic market with 77 varieties, making domestic traditional Chinese medicine derivatives companies face a more difficult competitive landscape.