Purely breast-fed infants shall start to add infant food supplement from 6 months. Formula-fed infants usually start to add food supplements from 4 months, and gradually add some foods other than breast milk, including rice flour, puree, etc. Solid food, boiled rice, noodles, solid food cut into small pieces of fruits, vegetables, etc. These foods are supplementary foods for infants and young children.
Current Marketing Situation
Infant food supplement products can be roughly divided into three categories.
1. Satiety satisfying supplementary foods based on rice cereal and noodles;
2. Biscuit-based complementary foods based on biscuits;
3. Food supplements based on fruits puree and vegetable puree;
Among them, rice cereal supplements in China account for almost half of the entire infant food supplement consumer market.
At present, China's infant food supplement market is still in the early stage of development, and consumers have a cognitive process for supplementary food consumption. According to the supplementary food consumption market structure of developed countries such as Europe and the United States, the proportion of the three types of supplementary food consumption distribution is roughly 4:4:2, which means that the scale of supplementary foods in the future is also huge. If an infant consumes 100g of food per day, the market capacity of infant food supplements exceeds 80 billion in the current retail price of infant food supplements.
However, the current market capacity of infant food supplements in China is only 9-10 billion. This is mainly due to differences in consumer awareness, ideas and habits. Up to 40% of urban households do not choose to buy supplementary food, and this proportion is as high as 80% in rural areas.
The Future of The Market
China's infant food supplement market has maintained a steady development progress. In 2008, the market size was only 3.5 billion Chinese yuan. By 2014, it had reached 9.86 billion Chinese yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 20%. It is expected that in the next five years, Chinese baby food supplement industry will remain 15- 20% growth rate.
According to the estimation, the release of the second-born child potential energy will bring approximately 5.433 million, 7.595 million, 6.179 million, 4.673 million and 3.347 million new populations in 2018-2022.
It is estimated that after 3 years, the market for infant food supplements will grow to 7-9 billion. The scale of the supplementary food market will booming in a rapid rise in the next three years.
