Yashili

Products

Yashili produces a range of foodstuffs including infant formula, infant rice cereal, milk powder, soybean milk powder, juice powder, cornmeal flakes, oatmeal, preserved fruits, nutritional supplements and health foods, totaling more than 300 product items, which are sold throughout China and in overseas markets.

Yashili's focus is increasingly on infant formula which now accounts for 80% of the group's sales. Yashili has two infant formula brands; Yashily and Scient. The company also sells nutritional products, namely soymilk powder and pediatric rice flour under the Yashily brand, cereal under Zhengwei brand as well as milk powder for adults and teenagers under Youyi brand. The Group launched pediatric milk formula serial products in the Golden Ambery brand under Yashily and Merla brand under Scient, which possess quality nutrition and target consumers in high-end market. The Group's core products, Yashily a-Golden series and Scient Golden series, mainly focus on middle to high-end consumer groups, while Yashily's Newwitt series and Scient's Ordinary Pack Series mainly focus on middle-end consumer groups. Yashily's New Formula series mainly focuses on low to middle-end consumer groups. Yashili also sells other types of nutritional food products, namely milk powder for adults and teenagers under the Youyi brand, soymilk powder, rice flour and cereal under the Yashily brand and breakfast cereals under the Zhengwei brand.

Marketing and sales channels

Yashili sell its products via a comprehensive national sales and distribution network, which covers all regions within mainland China. The milk powder products sales network comprises around 1,500 regional distributors, who directly or indirectly further distribute Yashili's products to over 105,000 retail outlets, including supermarkets, department stores, specialty stores and large membership chain supermarkets as well as grocery stores. Yashili also sells its products to 15,000 maternal and child stores, which it claims had pushed up market share in this channel, bringing new growth points for the Group's performance. The company's extensive milk powder products distribution network is formed by more than 2,300 marketing staff under the support of over 600 liaison locations.

Brand building

In the “2011 Annual Meeting on Competitiveness of Chinese Brand and Third Summit of Chinese Brands and Brand Leaders” held in Beijing in March 2012, Yashily was given the “2011 Most Influential Brand Award in China”. In July 2012, “Yashily” was named 500 Most Valuable Brand in China with a brand value of RMB9.865 billion, ranking 154 overall. Compared to 2011, Yashili's brand value increased by RMB2.09 billion, while its ranking went up nine places.

2008 Chinese milk scandal

In 2008, a crisis occurred in China in which melamine-tainted powdered milk was found being produced by a large number of Chinese dairy manufacturers. Melamine was found in 22 out of 109 manufacturers tested including industry majors Mengniu, Yili, Bright Dairy and Yashili. Three different Yashili subsidiaries and brands were found to have melamine: Guangdong Yashili Group, Shanxi Yashili Dairy and Scient (Guangzhou) Infant Nutrition. Across the three Yashili infant formula products tested, 24 out of 54 samples were found to have melamine. Yashili's infant formula products were the only Chinese infant formula being exported and no melamine was found in those products. Yashili captured contaminated or suspect product from distributors and filmed it being burned. It also used company funds to buy back the product from distributors. Yashili International said the melamine incident had caused it a total loss of 787 million yuan in 2008, which were mainly attributable to the costs and expenses relating to product recalls and decreased sales in the second half of 2008. Yashili said in a separate statement that it appointed safety experts to help improve consumer confidence in its products. A six-person panel will be headed by Robert Brackett, a former director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In February 2009 new allegations emerged against Yashili. The Legal Weekly claimed that the Shanxi Yashili Dairy Company had repackaged 30 tonnes of contaminated milk powder as new product. Yashili denied the accusation.

In 2009, a customer Guo Li (zh:郭利案) sought compensation from Yashili for his daughter's kidney damage, after using Yashili products. Yashili agreed to a 3 million yuan deal, but secretly recorded the conversation and reported Guo Li to the police for blackmailing. Guo Li was arrested by ambushing police at the agreed deal payment time. In Jan 8th, 2010, Guo Li was sentenced to 5 years in jail for blackmailing. Guo Li served the full sentence and was released in 2014 after divorcing and losing custody of his daughter. In 2017, Chinese court re-tried the case and revoked the previous sentence.