Fonterra sales jump 31% at 24-hour Chinese shopping event
All Fonterra products were available during the Chinese Double 11 promotion. Anmum sales alone increased 41% on last year, with online platforms’ (JD and Tmall) sales of Anchor cream, cheese and butter sales doubling to more than 5m RMB ($675,000). Twelve tonnes of Anchor unsalted butter was sold – 22 times the amount sold last year.
President of Fonterra China, Christina Zhu, said Fonterra achieved another strong result with an estimated total of 132m RMB ($18.9m) in the Double 11 sales period, across the Anchor, Anmum and Anlene brands.
“Anchor UHT was a crowd favorite, topping number one in its category for another year. After our continuous efforts in building the brand in China over the last five years, Anchor’s popularity among Chinese consumers is still very exciting to watch,” Zhu said.
“Our focus during this event is to deliver value at scale – getting the best return by reaching as many consumers as we could while keeping Anchor’s premium up.
“While some companies heavily bulk discount their brands on Double 11, overall our prices were 5% higher than last year and 25% higher than our competitors.”
More than 30m visits
More than 30m people visited the Anchor online store within 24 hours. The equivalent of 8,400 tonnes of product was sold.
Zhu said Fonterra has concentrated on building the brand, with a focus on digital marketing over the past five years.
“We’re proud to be taking our farmers’ milk to the world. Double 11 is world's largest shopping event in a market worth $800bn, but ultimately for us it's about building the Anchor brand in China and selling more of our farmers milk as high-value products,” Zhu said.
Double 11 is a global retail sale held on China’s ‘Single’s Day’ holiday. According to data from Alibaba, the event returned $31bn in turnover this year alone, with 1bn orders placed.
