---
title: "Can Jinmailang Complete the 'Elephant Turn'?"
description: "As the instant food war intensifies, does Jinmailang still have a trump card? At the start of 2022, Jinmailang has been active, launching a new brand, Lamian Fan, and securing 600 million RMB in Series A funding from Jiahua Capital on January 28. These moves suggest that this 28-year-old company is undergoing the pains and disruptions of an 'elephant turn'."
author: "锦舟"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-02-18"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/can-jinmailang-complete-the-elephant-turn-85933814/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/can-jinmailang-complete-the-elephant-turn-85933814.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/S6Bsu6b4RUzMxpxBb2ch7w"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%BB%8A%E9%BA%A6%E9%83%8E%E8%83%BD%E5%AE%8C%E6%88%90-%E5%A4%A7%E8%B1%A1%E8%BD%AC%E8%BA%AB-%E5%90%97-85933814.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/can-jinmailang-complete-the-elephant-turn-85933814/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Can Jinmailang Complete the 'Elephant Turn'?

> As the instant food war intensifies, does Jinmailang still have a trump card? At the start of 2022, Jinmailang has been active, launching a new brand, Lamian Fan, and securing 600 million RMB in Series A funding from Jiahua Capital on January 28. These moves suggest that this 28-year-old company is undergoing the pains and disruptions of an 'elephant turn'.

As the instant food war intensifies, does Jinmailang still have a trump card?
At the start of 2022, Jinmailang has been active.
Not only has it actively innovated its brands by launching a new brand, Lamian Fan, but it has also advanced in financing. According to Xiniu Data, **on January 28, Jinmailang received a 600 million RMB Series A funding round from Jiahua Capital.** These signs indicate that this 28-year-old company is experiencing the pains and disruptions of an 'elephant turn'. Once a model in the instant noodle era, Jinmailang, since launching 'Yitong Ban' in 2015, has built a golden brand in the instant food category through cost leadership and distribution in lower-tier markets, becoming a significant player among instant noodle companies.
However, after parting ways with Nissin and terminating cooperation with Uni-President, **Jinmailang suffered setbacks in both its noodle and beverage businesses.**
In terms of financing, Master Kong had already knocked on the door of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in February 1996, and Uni-President went public in December 2001, but Jinmailang's listing path has remained stagnant. After the millennium, a wave of consumption upgrades quietly swept the Chinese market. As Generation Z increasingly pursues material life, there has been a certain disconnect between Jinmailang's market image and public consumption preferences.
Although Jinmailang has successively launched products like Laofanjia and Udon Noodles to cater to Chinese consumers with increasingly high standards for instant food, it has **never crossed the chasm of its low-end brand image.** However, with Jinmailang's frequent transformation moves now, does this mean that Jinmailang already possesses the determination and corporate strategy to support its 'elephant turn'? How will the drastic transformation be wielded?
**Jinmailang cannot subvert Jinmailang**
According to Euromonitor and Everbright Securities Research Institute data, from 2016 to 2020, the scale of China's instant food market grew from 85.76 billion RMB to 109.47 billion RMB. If calculated at a compound annual growth rate of 6%, **the instant food market size will reach 630 billion RMB by 2025.** The rapid development of the 'lazy economy' has driven the rise of instant food, while 'consumption upgrade' has become the long-term driver of industry growth. Data source: Euromonitor, Everbright Securities Research Institute. Meanwhile, in the domestic instant noodle market, the first-mover advantages of established noodle companies are not obvious, and there are still huge competitive opportunities.
According to Euromonitor data, in 2021, the market share of the top 10 companies in domestic instant noodle sales was only 75.1%, while in Japan and the US, the CR3 for instant noodles was 84.4% and 90.0% respectively. The concentration of the domestic instant noodle industry still needs to be strengthened. **As one of the 'three giants of instant noodle food', Jinmailang naturally does not want to miss the industry opportunities brought by the growth of the instant food market.** With rapid economic development and improved living standards, the upgrade of consumer demand has driven instant food towards high-end and diversified development, leading to the emergence of Udon Noodles and Laofanjia. However, Jinmailang's innovative product 'Udon Noodles' has disappointing sales on Taobao, with monthly sales of only 500+ so far.
Image source: Jinmailang Official Flagship Store. CBNData consumption big data shows that in 2020, post-85s, post-90s, and post-95s contributed 60% of total instant food sales, with post-95s and post-00s seeing significant growth in consumption, an increase of over 100%.
Undoubtedly, **young people have become the main consumers in the instant food market,** and they also hold consumption concepts that emphasize high quality and health. Jinmailang's 'Laofanjia' is precisely a product of the consumer-dominated era. However, according to a December 2021 survey by Consumer Titanium, there was no trace of the 'Laofanjia' series in supermarkets and convenience stores, and Jinmailang's Taobao flagship store also no longer had Laofanjia.
Nowadays, 'Wugudaochang', the originator of 'non-fried instant noodles', is rarely mentioned. The dominant position in China's instant noodle industry is still held by fried noodles. Image source: Jinmailang Taobao Flagship Store. Jinmailang is not giving up. At the beginning of this year, **Jinmailang launched a new Japanese ramen brand, Lamian Fan,** positioned as high-end, catering to healthy eating concepts and the lazy economy, featuring '0 fried healthy noodles', with the selling point of 3-minute no-cook preparation and authentic Japanese noodle shop taste. Currently, it has launched 2 specifications (cup and bucket) with a total of 6 flavors, available on Tmall flagship store and other platforms. This is another attempt by Jinmailang to single-handedly pry open the non-fried noodle market after the failure of Laofanjia. However, according to data from Lamian Fan's Tmall flagship store, as of February 9, the best-selling product had monthly sales of only 400+, which not only lags behind Master Kong's 20,000+ but also behind the similarly named 'Lamian Shuo'. This seems to indicate that **Jinmailang's previous product innovations have not achieved significant scale.** In terms of category layout and product matrix establishment, Jinmailang has still not formed a corresponding system.
**The front wave surges, the back wave rushes**
Jinmailang's listing path has been full of twists and turns. In 2004, Nissin and Jinmailang began cooperation, making multiple rounds of investment, and Jinmailang took the opportunity to change its company name to 'Jinmailang Nissin Food Co., Ltd.' At that time, Nissin was already a leading company in Japan's food industry. By partnering with Nissin, Jinmailang could potentially have access to world-leading noodle-making technology. However, **in 2015, Jinmailang and Nissin 'broke up',** with external speculation suggesting that Jinmailang's advantages in lower-tier markets were insufficient to support Nissin's ambition to compete in first-tier city markets. Image source: Nissin official website. In 2006, Jinmailang and Uni-President jointly established Jinmailang Beverage Co., Ltd., but in 2016, the two companies eventually parted ways. In 2019, Fan Mingke, the second son of Jinmailang founder Fan Guoqiang, signed a share transfer agreement with Lygend Group, the controlling shareholder of Lygend Sports. If the acquisition had succeeded, Jinmailang might have achieved a backdoor listing, but the acquisition ultimately failed. **In this regard, the industry generally believes that the failure of the acquisition plan was due to Jinmailang's tight capital chain.** The failure of foreign cooperation and domestic M&A dashed Jinmailang's listing dream, while the other two of the 'three giants of instant noodles', **Master Kong and Uni-President, had already listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,** with market capitalizations of 90 billion and 30 billion HKD respectively. It goes without saying that Jinmailang, as a 'front wave', would feel anxious. On December 28, 2021, **Sichuan Baijia Akuan Food (Baijia Food), with Jinmailang as a target, officially submitted its prospectus, planning to list on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.**
From the actual revenue situation in its prospectus, from 2018 to the first half of 2021, Baijia Food's revenues were 422 million, 633 million, 1.11 billion, and 593 million RMB respectively, far below Jinmailang's 20 billion RMB revenue level, but its performance in the capital market has been more impressive than Jinmailang's.
From the channel perspective, Baijia Food's high growth mainly comes from online channels. Data shows that from 2018 to the first half of 2021, Baijia Food's online sales channel share was 47.53%, 50.46%, 61.34%, and 63.58% respectively. Looking only at Tmall flagship store data, Baijia Food's best-selling product, Hongyou Mianpi, has monthly sales of over 30,000, far higher than Jinmailang's. In today's e-commerce era, Jinmailang's trump card remains its over 2.3 million terminal outlets and lower-tier markets.
**The embarrassment and edge of the elephant turn**
It is undeniable that even if Jinmailang is 'old', it still has the determination and resilience to make the elephant turn. The book **"Enterprise Life Cycle"** once mentioned that 'the cause of company decline and aging is a decrease in flexibility and an increase in controllability. As controllability increases and flexibility decreases, the company becomes increasingly disconnected from the environment and unable to keep up with the pace of environmental change.' The aforementioned Laofanjia and Lamian Fan are evidence of Jinmailang's entrepreneurial spirit. **Jinmailang's founder Fan Xianguo once publicly stated,**
'We strive to exit the fried noodle market by 2025. In the past, there were misunderstandings about instant noodles. I believe that in the next 5 to 10 years, China's food industry will be rewritten, from ordinary fast-food instant noodles to healthy noodles, which will be a major change for instant noodles.' Image source: Lamian Fan Tmall Official Flagship Store. This not only signifies the reshaping of the entire instant noodle industry but also means that Jinmailang needs to abandon its big single product 'Yitong Ban', which has sales of 5 billion RMB.
Although the 'follow strategy' is evident in Laofanjia and Lamian Fan, **it is still clear that Jinmailang has the determination to reform and the ambition to become a leader in new categories.** Similarly, although we mentioned earlier that the instant food market size is increasing year by year, the growth rate of instant noodles has stagnated.
This can be seen from the fact that the area for instant food on supermarket shelves has remained unchanged. Master Kong, Uni-President, Nissin, and Jinmailang's 'Yitong Ban' still occupy the vast majority of shelf space, but their companions have changed from Fumando and Huafeng to Li Ziqi and Zihaiguo.
Despite Jinmailang's innovation, it still cannot escape the curse of 'noodles'.
**For Jinmailang, it faces competition with Baixiang in lower-tier markets and with Master Kong in first-tier markets.**
At the same time, in recent years, the instant food market has been dominated by young people, and marketing, as one of the main means of conveying brand image, has been increasingly valued. In addition to continuous advertising on CCTV, Jinmailang has also begun product promotion on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Douyin, using cost-effective KOLs for nationwide seeding, trying to win over young people through methods they are more receptive to.
However, young people seem unimpressed.
In fact, for old brands that dare to break conventions and actively innovate, maintaining the evergreen of existing product categories and creating another hit single product are equally important. After all, in the consumer goods industry, the curse of involution is intensifying, and those peaceful days will eventually fade away in an era of fierce competition.
Source: Internet Those Things (ID: hlw0823), Author: Jin Zhou
_-END-_


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671