Visit the Yuanqi Forest Factory: It is still expanding production, but the locals don’t like to drink it.

Originally produced by Ranciyuan (ID:chaintruth) Rancaijing

Author | Cao Yang Feng Xiaoting

Editor | Rao Xiafei

"No It’s clear, there is no impact, our work here is normal.”

Although the “0 sucrose and 0 sugar” incident caused an uproar among consumers, Ran Finance found during an on-site visit that Yuanqi Forest was in Anhui Province. The production base in Chuzhou is calm.

"I heard that they are still expanding their production base and hiring a lot of people." Local people in Chuzhou have a good impression of Yuanqi Forest Factory. "Their treatment is better than the local ones."

< p> But in Chuzhou, the drinks of "Yuanqi Forest" are not well known. In the hotel where Ran Finance stayed, Yuanqi Forest products were not found in the product display area of ??the hotel. Instead, there were more regular drinks such as Master Kong and Coca-Cola. On the shelves of local supermarkets, Yuanqi Forest Products has only one "milk tea and jasmine scented" drink with Chuzhou factory information listed among the consignees. Moreover, the prices in local supermarkets are almost the same as those in cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou.

Local residents also don’t know much about Yuanqi Forest. Most of the older citizens said they had never heard of this brand. They only heard about Yuanqi Forest’s local factory when it was mentioned. They will react, "Oh, you are talking about this, this is just a Beijing brand, and it has a factory in Chuzhou." They don't drink this kind of "Internet celebrity drink" produced locally. "It's a bit expensive, and I heard it's sugar-free." It doesn’t have any special taste, and we don’t like it very much.”

But the drink, which is not very popular in the place of origin, is very popular among young people.

According to the Beijing News Shell Finance, during June 18, 2019, Yuanqi Forest sold 2.26 million bottles of drinks on Tmall, ranking first in the sales and sales volume of Tmall water drinks. , the total sales volume of the entire network reached 3.23 million bottles, and the total sales exceeded 15 million yuan. In May 2020, Yuanqi Forest's monthly sales reached 260 million yuan, exceeding the entire year of 2018; in the first five months of 2020, a total of 190 million bottles were sold, with total sales reaching 660 million yuan. For the whole year of 2020, Yuanqi Forest achieved sales of nearly 3 billion yuan.

"0 sucrose and 0 sugar" is the selling point of Yuanqi Forest. From the beginning, Yuanqi Forest has quickly become a hot brand in the domestic beverage industry under the "healthy banner" of "0 sugar, 0 fat and 0 calories". Red brands, while gaining a large number of young consumers, have also gained the favor of capital.

Tianyancha Professional Edition data shows that since its establishment, Yuanqi Forest has maintained a financing rhythm of one year. On March 30, 2021, Yuanqi Forest completed a new round of strategic financing, led by new shareholders Warburg Pincus, L catterton and old shareholder Sequoia Capital China. Although the transaction amount was not disclosed, after the completion of this round of financing, Yuanqi Forest’s valuation has reached US$6 billion.

According to 36Kr’s previous reports, after the strategic financing completed on March 1, 2020, Yuanqi Forest was valued at US$2 billion. In other words, in less than a year, the valuation of Yuanqi Forest has skyrocketed by about three times.

But now, Yuanqi Forest slaps itself in the face.

On April 10, Yuanqi Forest’s official Weibo posted a Weibo post titled “A Belated Upgrade” to redefine “0 sucrose and 0 sugar” to consumers. It said that in the product labeling and promotion of milk tea products, the difference between "0 sugar" and "0 sucrose" was not explained, which could easily lead to misunderstandings. The packaging of most milk tea produced from February 4th and all milk tea produced from March 18th has been changed from the original "0 sucrose and low fat" to "low sugar and low fat". All Yuanqi Forest milk tea produced from March 20th will no longer contain crystallized fructose in the raw materials.

As soon as Yuanqi Forest’s Weibo post was posted, it immediately caused an uproar on social media. “Forget it he cheated me out of money, and he also cheated me into gaining weight.

"Isn't this deceiving consumers?" "The Yuanqi Forest made its fortune by cheating"... On various platforms, there are endless accusations against the Yuanqi Forest. As of the release of Rancaijing, the number of views of the topic #元气 Forest Apologizes for Promoting 0 Cane Sugar# on Weibo has reached 2.6 billion, with 18,000 discussions.

Consumers and the industry are not convinced by the explanation of Yuanqi Forest, said Kelly Weaver, a Zhihu user with a master’s degree in epidemiology at the University of Munich. Replacing sucrose with fructose is not only a matter of business integrity, but also a practice that will cause additional health risks to consumers.

Xinhuanet commented on April 12, Yuanqi Forest. “Reminder apology” and red envelopes cannot soothe consumers’ anger: “Is an apology useful? My fat body doesn't accept apologies! "And, as Yuanqi Forest wrote at the beginning of the announcement, "a belated upgrade," the official is still playing word games and apologizing verbally, but in fact, the core still defines the incident as a "product upgrade" rather than a "marketing accident. ".

Lawyer Tang Meng from Shanghai Everbright Law Firm told Rancaijing that the ingredient information has now been admitted by Yuanqi Forest to be inconsistent, and it is indeed very likely that consumers will mistakenly believe that it does not contain any sugar and buy it. According to Article 28 of the "Advertising Law" stipulates that if the ingredient information of a product is inconsistent with the actual situation and has a substantial impact on purchasing behavior, it can be deemed as false advertising.

According to Article 2 of the "Advertising Law". Article 55: Anyone who publishes false advertisements illegally shall be ordered by the market supervision and management department to stop publishing the advertisements, order the advertiser to eliminate the impact within the corresponding scope, and impose a fine of not less than three times but not more than five times the advertising fee. If the advertising fee cannot be calculated or is obviously biased, If it is low, the maximum penalty is one million yuan.

In fact, it is not just Yuanqi Forest. In recent years, under the publicity and awareness that "high sugar accelerates aging and obesity", contemporary young people's " "Buddhist" has a strong awareness of health care, and "zero sugar", "zero calories" and "zero fat" have gradually become the pursuit of many young people. As a result, a series of new sugar substitutes and even zero-sugar products have emerged, such as Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, Master Kong There are corresponding products under well-known brands.

Sugar substitutes are artificial sweeteners. According to 30,000 Capital, artificial sweeteners refer to chemical substances that have a sweet taste through artificial chemical transformation or synthesis. , high sweetness and no calories. Most artificial sweeteners are hardly converted by the human body and have no nutritional value.

But this does not mean that some so-called "sugar-free" drinks on the market are really sweet. All are "sugar-free", and consumers need to be more careful when purchasing.

After the "painted skin" is peeled off, will the image of Yuanqi Forest in the minds of consumers remain the same as before? , it depends on whether Yuanqi Forest can win back the trust of consumers.

Despite the great criticism from the outside world, the origin of Yuanqi Forest is still ". Full of vitality.

On the afternoon of April 13, Ran Finance came to Chuzhou, Anhui, where there is the first self-built production base established by Yuanqi Forest. Several empty large trucks were parked outside the north gate of the factory. . The trucks are in an orderly manner. After the front truck drives into the factory area, the rear truck will drive to the factory gate so that factory staff can sterilize and disinfect the vehicles. After the front truck is loaded and driven out, the rear truck will drive into the factory area, and the cycle continues. .

“I don’t know. There is no decrease in the number of vehicles (container trucks with a maximum towing capacity of 40,000kg) in the past two days. It is almost the same as usual, with 40-50 vehicles per day. "That afternoon, there were several truck drivers waiting to load goods chatting outside the north gate. When Ran Finance asked them whether they knew about the recent statement released by Yuanqi Forest and the heated discussion in society, they all expressed no knowledge of it.

When Ran Finance further asked where the goods are generally shipped, a driver replied, "The factory in Chuzhou is a relatively large production area, and the goods are shipped from all over the country. "According to Ran Finance's observation, the license plate numbers of several trucks parked at the door are mostly Su A and Anhui M, which means that the vehicles are mostly from Nanjing and Chuzhou.

"Everything is normal here.

"An employee of Yuanqi Forest Factory also expressed that he had no knowledge. The employee told Rancaijing that from his observation, the factory's production has not been affected in recent days.

"No. What is the impact? We are still expanding production. "The above-mentioned employees told Rancaijing that only the first phase of the project has been put into operation at present, and the second phase of the project that started construction last year is also nearing completion, and it will be completed and put into operation soon.

In fact, Yuanqi Forest is also doing a lot of work in Chuzhou. Recruiting. In the Chuzhou Talent Network mini program, Yuanqi Forest Company has posted 15 job recruitment positions, and another human resources company has posted two job positions related to Yuanqi Forest and 17 recruitment positions. According to the information, the number of recruitment for beverage skilled workers and packaging operators is as high as 30. The monthly salary of packaging operators is in the range of 4,000-7,000 yuan, while the monthly salary of beverage skilled workers is in the range of 6,000-7,000 yuan.

Wang Li intends to come to interview for jobs at Yuanqi Forest. He told Rancaijing that the salary and benefits offered by Yuanqi Forest are considered good in the local area. “The salary of local workers in Chuzhou is around 4,000 yuan, but Yuanqi Forest in addition to paying employees five In addition to the insurance, food and accommodation are included, and the wages are several hundred thousand yuan more than other factories. "

Wang Li told Rancaijing that he only knew that Yuanqi Forest was an Internet celebrity brand, but he had never bought Yuanqi Forest's products. "Four or five yuan for a bottle of drink is a bit expensive, and he said it was useless. Sugar and sugar-free drinks don’t taste that good to me, so I’ve never bought them. Ran Finance learned that many local people hold similar views. Staff from several supermarkets said that the sales of Yuanqi Forest products are not large in the local area.

Wang Li said, Although he himself has never tasted Yuanqi Forest Products, he thinks it is a pretty good company based on past experience. “The development of a beverage and food company mainly depends on production capacity. Simply put, the more trucks that come to the factory to transport goods every day, it means The better the company is. I worked at Yinlu before, and the number of trucks that Yinlu came to deliver goods in one day was not as many as that of Yuanqi Forest Factory in half a day. ”

In addition to the second phase of the Chuzhou factory project, Yuanqi Forest invested in the construction last year, as well as production bases in Tianjin and Zhaoqing, Guangdong. Yuanqi Forest invested heavily in building factories in East China, North China and South China. There are even plans to build factories in cities such as Wuhan and Chengdu in the next step. The motivations are obvious. The first is to expand production capacity and innovation, and the second is to promote the market in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other regions. radiation and reduce transportation costs.

After all, before the Chuzhou production base was completed and put into operation in July 2020, the production of Yuanqi Forest products relied on the OEM production model. He also did not forget to post the position of "beverage production resident" on the BOSS direct recruitment, which is mainly responsible for the production management of the foundry.

Ran Finance visited supermarkets in Beijing, Guangzhou, Chuzhou and other places to display them on the shelves. There are 6 main products in the Yuanqi Forest series, among which the sparkling water, burning tea and milk tea series are the most common. The other three products are Full Score, Bodybuilding Light Tea and Alien, which are not regular products.

When further checking the information on the bottles of Yuanqi Forest products, Rancaijing found that most of the products are produced by Yuanqi Forest entrusted by other parties, and there are several entrusted companies, including Jianlibao, Huiyuan, and Tongshi (unified generations). Companies such as Yuanqi Forest Products Co., Ltd. and Toyo Beverage are all OEMs for Yuanqi Forest products. What is interesting is that except for the milk tea series produced by Yuanqi Forest in Chuzhou factory, Tongshi is responsible for the OEM production. At the same time, Tongshi is also the entrusted party of unified Assam milk tea

In sharp contrast to the "everything is normal" production base, there are angry consumers

"Important. Misleading, people with high blood sugar suffer severely. "My family members have diabetes and cannot drink sugar. When they say it is sugar-free, they often buy it and drink it. Isn't this harmful?" "I can still drink it with peace of mind every day, and it still sells it for such a high price." "What else can you believe in a product that is plagiarized starting from its name?" "... Under the Weibo topic, there are many verbal and written criticisms of Yuanqi Forest.

But Yuanqi Forest obviously did not take this matter seriously. In a Weibo post on April 10, they gave a seemingly perfect solution. "Users who have purchased milk tea at the official Yuanqi Forest e-commerce store can receive a 20 yuan cash red envelope by contacting the store's customer service."

This solution was criticized by consumers as "without sincerity" . "It's obviously false propaganda, saying you will compensate consumers, but you have to make consumers rush to find you. Taobao customer service has failed to read back many times and forced to close the conversation..." There are many consumers who have encountered the above situation, "I The customer service staff of Bai Strawberry left the message unread. I searched for it several times for 6 and a half hours, but no one responded at all. I laughed so hard.

Netizen Xiaojian told Rancaijing that after receiving a "late red envelope" message from the Yuanqi Forest flagship store on the morning of April 11, she went to the Tmall flagship store to communicate with customer service, but was given After sending multiple messages to customer service, no one received a positive reply from customer service. Xiaojian has now found the red envelope registration link entrance and registered the information. As of press time, the amount has not been received.

Although Yuanqi Forest officially stated, "There are too many users of Milk Tea. Now all accounts in the store have received risk warnings due to too many red envelopes. Please wait patiently." However, the word game caused by the "zero sucrose, low fat" milk tea products owned by Yuanqi Forest seems to have not subsided yet.

Since its establishment in 2016, Yuanqi Forest has relied on the concept of "sugar-free and low-calorie" to target Generation Z. With strong marketing "momentum", Yuanqi Forest has been making rapid progress in the beverage market. .

Yuanqi Forest can be called "generous" in marketing. According to Growthbox's product survey report, Yuanqi Forest spent a total of 600 million yuan on online and offline marketing in 2020, and its advertising mainly focused on variety shows and TV series.

According to incomplete statistics from Ran Finance, Yuanqi Forest has sponsored variety shows such as "Our Band", "Sports Boys", "A String of Life" and "Life Is Like a Boiling". In 2020, Yuanqi Forest also spent 150 million yuan to win the sponsorship rights for Station B’s Spring Festival Gala.

In addition to variety shows, Yuanqi Forest is still in 2020. Taking advantage of the popularity of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", Zhang Yuqi, who has her own traffic, has been invited to serve as the brand ambassador. According to the official information of Yuanqi Forest, celebrities such as Wei Daxun, Wang Yibo, Li Qin, Reyza, and Sun Yi are also drinking Yuanqi Forest products.

This series of operations has deepened the impression of Yuanqi Forest in the minds of the public, especially young people, and also made Yuanqi Forest favored by capital.

Tianyancha information shows that one year after its establishment, on December 19, 2017, Yuanqi Forest completed angel round financing, and the investor was Challenger Capital. Since then, Yuanqi Forest has basically continued to make rapid progress in financing one round a year.

In 2019, Yuanqi Forest completed Series B and strategic financing of RMB 150 million in just half a year in March and October respectively.

However, despite the rapid development of Yuanqi Forest, doubts about its "sugar-free" milk tea have been heard long before the announcement on Weibo.

Kelly Weaver, a Zhihu user and master of epidemiology at the University of Munich, clearly listed Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea as a high-sugar/high-calorie group in the article "Review of the Nutritional Value of Common Low-Sugar and Sugar-Free Beverages in Supermarkets".

KellyWeaver said that in fact, the sucrose added to ordinary drinks and the fructose added to Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea are both refined sugars. Therefore, nutritionally speaking, adding sucrose to ordinary drinks is "added sugar", and adding fructose to Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea is also "added sugar". What deserves more attention is that fructose is a sugar that is worse for health than sucrose.

According to his calculations, a 480ml bottle of coffee-flavored milk tea has energy as high as 180*480/100/4.184=206kcal, which is equivalent to 1 calorie of a 18-49-year-old woman with light physical activity. /3 lunches.

In addition, regarding the low GI of fructose involved in Yuanqi Forest’s milk tea promotion, Kelly Weaver said that this is purely a word game to avoid the important and take the easy. "GI is the 'glycemic index', and if you take in fructose and then measure glucose, you won't find anything?"

In addition to the ingredients of its milk tea products being questioned, Yuanqi Forest changed its trademark from Even the packaging is in Japanese style, but the actual place of production, factory and sales market are all in China, and the "pseudo-Japanese" controversy has never stopped.

But at that time, Yuanqi Forest was probably busy building a factory and did not have time to pay attention to word games and the "pseudo-Japanese" controversy.

What kind of gold mine has Yuanqi Forest discovered by “getting rich” with the help of the “sugar-free” concept?

According to IDF data, the number of diabetic patients (20-79 years old) worldwide reached 463 million in 2019, and it is expected that by 2045, 700 million people worldwide will suffer from diabetes. The IDF predicts that by 2045, China, India and the United States, which have the largest number of diabetic patients in the world, will reach 147 million, 134 million and 36 million respectively.

With the development of consumption upgrades and people’s awareness of health, more and more people are paying attention to the harm of excessive sugar intake to the body. At the same time, our country is also frequently issuing a number of policy documents to promote sugar-reduced living and the use of natural sweetening substances and sweeteners permitted by food safety standards to replace sucrose.

As a result, the "sugar-free" trend quickly began to spread.

According to the "2021-2027 China Sugar-Free Beverage Industry Market Research and Investment Strategy Consulting Report" released by Zhiyan Consulting, the market size of China's sugar-free beverage industry has grown from 1.66 billion yuan in 2014 to 6.72 billion yuan in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 41.85%; by 2019, China's sugar-free beverage market will reach 9.87 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 46.88%.

Among them, sugar-free drinks have appeared in tea drinks, carbonated drinks, soda water, etc. that are frequently consumed by consumers. In addition to new drinks represented by Yuanqi Forest, the players entering the game include Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, Master Kong and others are also unwilling to lag behind.

The "2020 China Sugar-Free Beverage Industry Analysis Report - Industry Competition Status and Prospect Assessment and Forecast" shows that among the brands in my country's sugar-free beverage industry in May 2020, Yuanqi Forest ranked first in sales proportion , reaching 39%. The sales of Yuanqi Forest, Coca-Cola and Nongfu Spring increased by more than 300% year-on-year.

On April 13, Ran Finance found in a large supermarket in Beijing, including sparkling water and milk tea under Yuanqi Forest, Oriental Leaf and Scream under Nongfu Spring, Yiquan, Coca-Cola, Sprite, AH! HA! Small universe and many other drinks. Some of these drinks are labeled "sugar-free", some are labeled "0 sugar, 0 calories", "0 fat", and some are labeled "0 sucrose".

A comparison by Rancaijing found that among the above eight so-called "0 sugar, 0 calorie" drinks, except for Oriental Leaf under Nongfu Spring, the other seven products are more or less Added sugar substitutes, or sweeteners.

Among them, drinks with a sweetener added include Genki Forest Sparkling Water and AH! HA! Small Universe, both of them add erythritol, which is called a functional sugar alcohol, and it ranks second after water in the ingredient list. This also makes it difficult to understand why these "zero sugar" drinks taste not affected at all and are still so sweet.

The products containing two sweeteners are Coca-Cola’s Yee Spring and Diet Coke, both of which contain the artificial sweeteners acesulfame potassium and sucralose (i.e. sucralose).

Nongfu Spring’s Scream, Yuanqi Forest’s Milk Tea, and Coca-Cola’s Sugar-Free Coke and Sugar-Free Sprite all contain three or more sweeteners.

Among them, Scream adds xylitol, erythritol and sucralose (i.e. sucralose); Yuanqi Forest milk tea adds erythritol, steviol glycosides and crystallized fructose; Sugar-free Coke and Sugar-free Sprite add Aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose.

Are the "sugar-free" promoted by these drinks truly "healthy and worry-free"?

An Jianhua, deputy chief nutritionist of Beijing Electric Power Hospital and member of the expert group of Beijing Student Nutritional Meal Research Center, told Rancaijing that the main difference between different sweeteners added to different drinks lies in the extract and Difference in sweetness.

Zang Quanyi, a national first-level public nutritionist, told Rancaijing that the so-called sugar substitute is more beneficial to health is a relative term, not an absolute one. Compared with sugar, it does have less impact on blood sugar fluctuations and the formation of dental caries. But for many people who use this "zero sugar" to lose weight, when choosing a drink, they should not only look at the sugar content, but also the energy. That is, the energy provided by a hundred milliliters of drinks accounts for 100% of the daily intake. The percentage of energy.

At the same time, Zang Quanyi said that merchants cannot emphasize "zero sugar" when promoting and guiding consumers. In addition, some sugar substitutes are themselves controversial, such as aspartame.

KellyWeaver expressed the same view.

KellyWeaver said that although sweeteners are substances that only give sweetness to food and have little or no energy, existing epidemiological evidence shows that the use of non-nutritive sweeteners in drinking Sweet drinks do not necessarily have a lower risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

At the same time, if you only change sugary drinks to sugar-free drinks without changing other unhealthy eating habits and living habits, the health benefits that can be obtained may still be very limited.

"But no matter what kind of drink it is, whether it contains sugar or not, it needs to be controlled, and excessive drinking is not recommended." Zang Quanyi said that for health reasons, it is best to drink less or even no drinks. choose.

"The 'sugar-free' that Yuanqi Forest has always claimed in the past is a 'false proposition', not to mention that this time he has also stated that it is not truly 'sugar-free'." Wang Li, an industry expert, said that after this After this incident, it is questionable whether the "sugar-free" Yuanqi Forest can no longer be "sweet" in the minds of consumers.

*The title picture comes from Visual China. Xiaoyu, Xiaojian, Wang Li and Wang Li in the article are all pseudonyms

*Disclaimer: Under no circumstances does the information or opinions expressed in this article constitute investment advice to anyone.