Mengniu anchors its nutrition core, deeply cultivates three major tracks, moves forward with steady confidence and a long-term vision, and builds a solid foundation for the dairy industry’s sustainable development.

In 2025, the dairy industry faces multiple challenges, including excess production capacity, price undercutting and volume grabbing, and insufficient release of consumer demand. Mengniu Dairy has always stayed true to the essence of dairy nutrition and a long-term development philosophy, following a core business logic of “value creating value.” It has focused on three major tracks—basic nutrition, functional nutrition, and medical nutrition—and has deepened its layout comprehensively. Against the backdrop of industry-wide overall pressure, the company has delivered an outstanding set of performance results. For the full year, the company achieved revenue of 82.24B yuan and operating profit of 6.56B yuan. Key financial indicators, including gross margin, net cash flow from operating activities, and free cash flow, all reached historical highs. Growth of double digits was achieved across fresh milk, cheese, milk powder, and domestic ice cream segments. With its hard-core performance of stable growth across multiple categories and value innovation across the entire value chain, the company has strengthened the foundation for sustainable development and charted a path toward high-quality, steady, and far-reaching growth in the dairy industry.

The core value of the dairy industry lies in providing high-quality nutrition centered on protein—an anchor Mengniu has always held to. Faced with some companies in the industry falling into the low-price undercutting trap of “discounting to win volume,” Mengniu breaks away from the zero-sum game in existing markets. It deeply integrates the corporate mission of “a little nutrition, brings every life to bloom” into every link of development across the entire industry chain. It always takes consumers’ core nutritional needs as its value anchor, rejects wasteful competition that deviates from the essence of business, and protects the industry ecosystem with a long-term approach. This also sets a benchmark for the industry’s overall sustainable development. Mengniu Dairy’s CEO Gao Fei said that the fundamental reason for achieving high-quality development in the dairy industry is to escape the trap of low-price undercutting, create health value for consumers with high-quality nutritional value. This is also the core meaning of the dairy industry’s “value creating value.”

In the basic nutrition track, Mengniu is not confined to merely “dividing up the existing market” like a cake. Instead, through all-round innovation in products, channels, and consumption scenarios, it works hard to make the national nutrition “cake” bigger and to solidify the demand foundation for the dairy industry’s sustainable development. In response to the pain point in China that around 660 million people are lactose intolerant, Mengniu developed and launched lactose-free product lines such as soft milk and simplified yogurt, breaking down the threshold for drinking milk and bringing hundreds of millions of potential consumers back into the group of people who drink milk. Leveraging its extreme supply chain and channel advantages, it delivers high-cost-performance basic dairy products to lower-tier markets such as counties and towns, effectively improving market penetration and consumer availability of basic dairy. To address shortcomings in domestic consumption of processed dairy products, it increases the development of “two-oils-one-cheese” products such as cheese, butter, and cream, and expands channels to drive the national shift from “drinking milk” to “actually consuming milk.” At the same time, it works with peers and various sectors of society to carry out nutrition education, removing knowledge barriers to scientific milk drinking and bringing high-quality nutrition to more people—truly fulfilling the industry responsibility of “helping more people drink milk, and drink better milk.”

As China’s per capita GDP has surpassed 10,000 US dollars for three consecutive years, consumer nutritional needs are accelerating toward “eating with precision and eating healthily.” People’s demand for body management and gut health is becoming increasingly urgent. Meanwhile, the silver-haired group has precise needs such as preventing chronic diseases and reducing muscle loss. Mengniu has taken an early and forward-looking approach by laying out the functional nutrition and medical nutrition tracks, using technological innovation and product R&D to create a second growth curve for sustainable corporate development and seize the early opportunity for high-quality industry development. Currently, Mengniu has completed foundational R&D layouts in six key areas, including bone and joint muscles, cardiovascular health, immune systems, and gut health. It has put into production the “Teconrui” special medical food project, entering the track for premium special medical products for infant and toddler groups. Its sports nutrition brand “Motions” has built a complete product matrix, becoming a benchmark brand in endurance sports and completing nearly a 100-million-yuan Series A financing. Its self-developed sugar-control probiotic Lc19 has been featured in the international top academic journal “Cell,” and has quickly realized product conversion by launching a series of products such as “Antisugar Shield.” This transforms research value into product value that consumers can experience, forming a virtuous cycle of “creating product value with technical value, and realizing commercial value with product value.”

From broad-based basic nutrition to precise matching in functional nutrition, and then to frontier breakthroughs in medical nutrition, Mengniu has built a sustainable development ecosystem characterized by value generation and continuous circulation by focusing on nutritional needs across the entire consumer life cycle. In 2025, under industry pressure, Mengniu achieved continuous optimization of its business structure: the basic liquid milk segment stabilized and rebounded; and double-digit growth was delivered across multiple categories. This demonstrates strong risk-resilience and developmental tenacity. Behind this is solid support from the strategic resolve of “value creating value.” In 2026, the first year of the “14th Five-Year Plan” period and an opening year for the “15th Five-Year Plan,” the dairy industry will receive positive signals such as stabilization in raw milk prices and a gradual recovery in demand. Mengniu leveraged its combination of “Winter Olympics marketing + Lunar New Year scenarios” at the beginning of the year to achieve a “strong start” in sales. Its stock price surged against the trend, which earned high recognition from the capital market, fully highlighting market confidence in the company’s ability to sustainably develop.

Looking to the future, Mengniu will continue to uphold a long-term approach, focus on its core mission in nutrition, and accelerate its comprehensive evolution from a “traditional dairy manufacturer” into a “provider of comprehensive nutrition and health solutions.” It will create health value across the entire life cycle for consumers with product value. It will create ecosystem value for high-quality development across the industry chain with innovation value. It will create long-term, steady returns for investors with operational value. And it will create social value that safeguards the shared health of humanity and the Earth by creating value through the industry. At a critical stage in the dairy industry’s transition to high-quality development, Mengniu is using comprehensive value creation to chart a path of sustainable development that is steady and far-reaching. It also provides replicable practical samples for China’s dairy industry to achieve high-quality development.

(Editor: Jiang Yongdan)

【Disclaimer】This article only represents the views of a third party and does not represent the position of Hexun.com. Investors should make decisions at their own risk. The risk shall be borne by investors themselves.

	 【Advertisement】This article only represents the author’s personal views and is not related to Hexun.com. The Hexun website remains neutral regarding statements, viewpoints, and judgment in this article, and does not provide any express or implied guarantees regarding the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the information contained herein. Please read for reference only, and take full responsibility yourself.

Report