VDL Farms, owned by Chinese billionaire Xianfeng Lu and his Moon Lake Investments company, will fly 50,000 litres of fresh milk a week into China from April, using a chartered Qantas weekly freight service direct from Hobart.
The milk, from the 20,000 dairy cows owned by Moon Lake on its remote northwest Tasmanian VDL farms at Woolnorth, will sell for an expensive 1000 yuan a litre, about $20 a litre.
Labelled as Van Milk, a shortened version of the name of the historic Van Diemen’s Land Company Mr Lu controversially bought in late 2015 for $280 million, the small 250ml, 600ml and one litre cartons of fresh Tasmanian milk will be delivered daily to wealthy consumers in Ningbo and Beijing.
Moon Lake’s Australian chief executive Sean Shwe said well-off Chinese families had been excited to discover they could have fresh Australian milk arriving on their doorsteps daily.
More than 20 million yuan of Van fresh milk has already pre-sold in Ningbo under Moon Lake’s monthly and annual subscription model, which is similar to a locked-in phone plan but for the provision of fresh milk daily.
But Mr Shwe is also is keen to encourage the help of the 80,000 “daigou” shoppers living in Australia, who traditionally buy products from the shelves of supermarkets and pharmacies in Australia before then selling and posting them to extensive networks of friends and families living across China, making a tidy profit in the process.
“We love fresh milk; but this year — the Year of the Rooster — will just be the start of what Moon Lake plans to do with a whole range of premium food products,” Mr Shwe said.
“This year will be about delivering on all those promises and more, ensuring that Van milk attains the status of high-end premium product in China, and ultimately building a trade bridge between Tasmania and China, with the help of the all-important daigou channel.”
It is estimated more than $800m of Australian-made products popular with Chinese consumers — such as infant formula, lanolin cream, Blackmores vitamins, manuka honey and Weetbix — were bought locally and shipped by daigou back to China last year.
Companies such as embattled Bellamy’s organic infant formula have found to their detriment that trying to cut out the daigou or grey export channels by undercutting their sale prices using direct Chinese e-commerce sites such as JD.com and Alibaba, can lead to daigou shunning their product completely, collapsing China sales.
Instead VDL Farms wants to work with the daigou shopping network, using their contacts and the trust Chinese consumers have in their personal shoppers, to expand distribution and sales of their new fresh Van milk across China, further afield from their own centres of Ningbo and Beijing.
Moon Lake will hold its first lavish event to introduce “daigou” sales agents in Perth to Van milk today, with other special “rainmaker” functions to be held shortly in Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart.
But because fresh milk is perishable, Mr Shwe said he was promoting a different sales model to daigou keen to sell Tasmanian milk to their network of China buyers. Instead of purchasing milk in Australia — Van milk is not available here and only has a shelf life of 11 days, making postage impossible — Moon Lake will airfreight and distribute the fresh milk to any Chinese consumers they nominate as interested, on behalf of the daigou.
Source: TheAustralian
Link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/dairy-farm-to-use-daigou-network-to-sell-fresh-milk-to-china/news-story/9c1013a02d410e23ae3b5401e3b67844