In the first half of 2025, the dairy industry's divergence is more evident than ever: facing sluggish demand, some dairy companies bucked the trend with double-digit revenue growth, while others saw profits halve amid fierce competition. Among the 20 listed dairy companies we reviewed, 11 achieved year-on-year revenue growth, while 9 declined. Leading players leveraged their full industry chain advantages to realize value, while small and medium-sized enterprises sought differentiation in niche segments. What signals does this divergence reveal? Where are the next opportunities for the dairy industry?

Market Layout: Finding the Right Channels to Seize Growth Opportunities

Different dairy companies' channel choices are often deeply tied to their product characteristics and resource endowments. Finding the right channels is key to converting potential opportunities into actual performance.

Yili Co., Ltd. targeted county-level markets for its milk powder business, through refined operations such as dealer training in counties and digital management of township outlets, achieving milk powder and dairy product revenue of 16.578 billion yuan, up 14.26% year-on-year, with county-level markets contributing 45% of the increment. This combination of "premium milk powder + down-market channels" not only avoids fierce competition in first-tier cities but also precisely meets the demand for consumption upgrades in counties—township families' demand for high-quality milk powder is rising, but previously lacked targeted channel coverage. Yili's layout fills this gap.

Bright Dairy & Food Co., Ltd. focused on channel efficiency for low-temperature products. Leveraging 98% cold chain coverage in East China (including community front warehouses and convenience store cold chain points), it integrated low-temperature milk into short-chain channels such as community front warehouses and convenience stores, raising the sales share of low-temperature products in community channels to 40%. Meanwhile, through rooftop photovoltaic cold chain warehouse renovations, electricity costs per warehouse dropped by 32%, ensuring the "freshness" of low-temperature milk while alleviating the pressure of high cold chain costs. Even though overall revenue slightly declined by 1.90%, the profitability of the low-temperature business still improved.

Tianrun Dairy, facing a 3.30% revenue decline, chose to deepen regional channels: within Xinjiang, it expanded township outlets in southern Xinjiang and developed exclusive channels at scenic spots like Tianshan Tianchi, launching "scenic area limited edition" yogurt; outside Xinjiang, it entered new retail platforms like Shanghai's "HotMax", using "regional penetration + channel adaptation" to mitigate market impact.

Ausnutria Dairy's overseas channel layout emphasizes "localization adaptation". During the reporting period, Ausnutria's international business achieved explosive growth. Among them, its goat milk powder brand Kabrita recorded overseas revenue of approximately RMB 483 million, up 65.7% year-on-year. Ausnutria stated that this achievement was mainly due to strategic breakthroughs in three core markets: the Middle East, North America, and the CIS, with significant improvements in channel expansion, product innovation, and brand building in each market.

Product Selection: Focusing on Niche Segments to Build Profit Advantages

In the context of overall market volatility, blindly expanding product lines is less effective than focusing on niche segments. Finding a track where you can go deep and excel is more likely to create profit advantages.

During the reporting period, Mengniu Dairy achieved revenue of 41.567 billion yuan, down 6.9% year-on-year, with net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.045 billion yuan. Responding to the diverse needs of different age groups, Mengniu launched over a hundred new products, covering a full-category matrix from ambient milk to low-temperature yogurt, from fresh milk to ice cream, and from functional milk to infant formula, leading consumers to "drink milk, drink good milk, drink the right milk".

Milkground (Miaokelanduo) achieved double growth in revenue and net profit, with revenue of 2.567 billion yuan, up 7.98% year-on-year; cheese product revenue accounted for 83.67% of total revenue, up 14.85% year-on-year. Among them, new products such as "Cheese Little Triangle" and "Cheese Little Granules" performed well. Since the beginning of this year, Milkground has increased its efforts in developing new cheese products, covering multiple scenarios such as children's snacks, family consumption, and catering industry. Catering industry series revenue surged 36.26% year-on-year, benefiting from increased orders from major customers like Yum China and the rising penetration of domestic cheese. This strategy of "narrow track, deep digging" has allowed Milkground to rapidly scale up in the cheese segment.

Sanyuan Foods, despite an overall revenue decline of 13.77%, maintained its advantage in low-temperature fresh milk. Its 72°C fresh milk, with a "24-hour from farm to shelf" short-chain supply chain, still holds a 58.3% sales share in Beijing's fresh milk market. For Sanyuan, Beijing consumers' demand for "fresh milk" is clear, and its local farms and short-chain delivery capabilities exactly match this demand. Even under overall market pressure, the competitiveness of its core products remains.

Innovation in the cold drinks segment also confirms the importance of "product-scenario fit". Yili's cold drinks business achieved revenue of 8.229 billion yuan, up 12.39%, maintaining industry leadership for 30 consecutive years, with the core being the launch of "low-sugar probiotic ice cream" and "camping portable popsicles", expanding scenarios such as post-meal desserts and outdoor consumption; Mengniu's ice cream business revenue was 3.88 billion yuan, up 15.0% year-on-year, with family-pack products' share rising to 35%, catering to family consumption needs. This "scenario-based product innovation" means cold drinks no longer rely solely on the traditional peak season but have found more growth drivers.

Cost and Risk: Refined Management to Withstand Market Fluctuations

The dairy industry is cost-sensitive, and the ability to anticipate and respond to risks is crucial. Whether it's cost control or cross-sector expansion, it must match one's own capabilities to remain stable amid fluctuations.

Yili Co., Ltd., during the downward cycle of raw milk prices, reduced raw material costs through large-scale procurement (raw milk procurement volume up 8% year-on-year), while relying on premium products like Jindian and Ambrosial to achieve a balance of "lower costs + stable profits". For large enterprises, the synergy of the full industry chain can better absorb cost fluctuations, both by leveraging procurement scale to lower prices and by ensuring profitability through premium products, forming a virtuous cycle.

YouRan Dairy focused on refined pasture management, using digital systems to monitor herd health and precisely formulate feed, stabilizing annualized milk yield per mature cow at 13.1 tons, with feed cost per kilogram down 12% year-on-year; under its ruminant systematic solutions business, sales of beef cattle and sheep concentrate feed increased 60.9% year-on-year; breeding business revenue increased 30.95% year-on-year; sales of sexed embryos for dairy cows increased 13.5% year-on-year, with significant improvements across all business indicators.

Zhuangyuan Pasture, as a small and medium-sized dairy enterprise, reduced procurement prices for corn and alfalfa by 8% and 12% respectively through centralized bidding. With revenue of 420 million yuan, its net loss narrowed by 68.5% compared to last year; Modern Farming focused on the feed segment, scientifically adjusting the ratio of alfalfa and corn, reducing feed cost per kilogram of milk by 11.4%. These cases show that cost control has no "scale threshold"; as long as you find a method suitable for yourself, whether centralized bidding or feed optimization, results can be seen.

The risk of cross-sector expansion tests corporate resolve even more. Knight Dairy became the fastest-growing company in the sample with 41.18% revenue growth, but its cross-sector white sugar business, affected by a decline in sugar beet sugar content (down 10%-15% year-on-year), incurred a loss of 26.2255 million yuan, ultimately leading to "high revenue growth but a 54.16% decline in net profit".

Final Thoughts

From the performance of 20 dairy companies, there is no "one-size-fits-all strategy" during the dairy industry's transformation; the key lies in the "match between strategy and one's own capabilities".

Yili's county-level channel layout matches its large-scale procurement and premium product capabilities; Milkground's cheese focus matches its supply chain optimization and catering channel expansion capabilities; Ausnutria's overseas layout matches its localized product R&D and channel operation capabilities. These successful cases are essentially about "doing what you can do well".

The first half of 2025 dairy company reports are more like a "strategy fit test". The industry still has growth opportunities, but it's no longer "whoever dares to expand wins", but rather "whoever can focus resources on their area of expertise will go further". An industry insider said that in the future, dairy companies need to further balance "value deepening" and "differentiated competition", building long-term competitiveness through technology empowerment and omni-channel operations, and seizing opportunities amid consumption changes.