Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-08-20
Beijing plans to permit sales of infant formula in drugstores nationwide as a part of its efforts to ensure the quality of the products, reports Guangzhou's 21st Century Business Herald, citing a Chinese official at a seminar.
Infant formula at a supermarket in Beijing. (Photo/CNS) |
Beijing plans to permit sales of infant formula in drugstores nationwide as a part of its efforts to ensure the quality of the products, reports Guangzhou's 21st Century Business Herald, citing a Chinese official at a seminar.
The measure
is aimed at boosting public confidence in domestic and foreign formula
producers and their products, said Xu Jing, a director at the Chinese Society
of International Trade under the Ministry of Commerce.
Representatives
from several milk powder suppliers, such as Nestle, Dumex, Mead Johnson, Wyeth,
Abbott and Beingmate were invited to attend the seminar, along with individuals
from noted pharmacy chains including China Resources, Jingxiang, Cachet and Sinopharm.
The
ministry plans to implement the project in three phases from 2013 to 2015, and
adopt a model of strategic procurement and unifying distribution and sales.
The first
stage will be launched in Beijing and eastern China's Jiangsu province between
October this year and the next Lunar New Year holiday at the beginning of next
year, the paper said. Milk powder aisles will be set up at 20 pharmaceutical
stores in Beijing and will be expanded to 10,000 stores in 100 cities after the
Lunar New Year holiday. By 2015, another 10,000 stores will be added, and the
total number of the cities covered will be 400.
"We
hope to capture 20% of the market share in two and half years. In other words,
we are targeting a share at least 15 billion yuan (US$2.5 billion) in a market
estimated to be worth 70 billion yuan (US$11.4 billion)," Xu said.
Supermarkets,
baby stores and online websites are currently the three main channels used to
purchase infant formula in China. However, in European countries and the United
States, the products are mainly sold at pharmacies to monitor the quality and
safety of the products. Meanwhile, 60% of infant formula products in Hong Kong
are also sold at drugstores.
Xu said
that an international brand center will be in charge of the procurement and
distribution, and this will help verify the origins of the products and ensure
its safety.
Based on
the ministry's data, there are around 420,000 pharmacies in China and 150,000
of them are drugstore chains. Considering their wide coverage across the
country, they are ideal for milk powder sales. An insider working at Dumex said
that customers buy infant formula at pharmacies in Europe because of the strict
quality controls and convenience.
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