It is possible to buy Beingmate milk powder products worth 888 yuan ($137.4) for only 7.5 yuan on Chinese e-commerce platforms. The only reason is that the products are near the end of their best-before date. The huge discount has sparked heated discussion on nearly-expired food - food that has nearly reached its sell-by date.
A discussion group named "I love near-expired food" went viral on Chinese social platforms, especially among the young, with people sharing experiences of buying near-expired food and information about where it is available.
The increase of production capacity also brings a huge inventory backlog to the market, making the near-expired food usher in a new development node. The subdivided market showcased the maturity of the industry, said analysts.
"The purchase of near-expired food, in fact, is a just-in-time type product, which could quickly appear or disappear with market changes at any time. Just because the Chinese market is big enough, any small demand can generate a huge capacity market, and therefore some industry suppliers can appear," said an independent economist surnamed Wang.
Huge market
In 2020, the total output value of China's snack food industry exceeded 3 trillion yuan. Even if calculated by 1 percent inventory, the market size of the near-expired food industry should be 30 billion yuan, with huge potential, read a report by iiMedia Research.
"Near-expired products can form a big market. But in the past, these products hid in the corner of the large supermarkets, and escaped the eyes of young people. Until 2020, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, upstream stores are overstocked, and many sellers of interim commodities have seized this point to develop the near-expired food," Zhang Yi, CEO of consulting agency iiMedia Research, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Read More at https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202107/1227946.shtml
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