Surge in demand for British milk from China
Worried mothers in China, concerned about the safety of local milk, are increasingly importing British baby milk.
Chinese parents with their babies gather for a check up at a hospital in Shenyang, northeast China, after the tainted milk scandal broke out in 2008 Photo: AFP/Getty Images
By Justin Harper
2:31PM BST 12 Sep 2012
British online food stores have seen a massive surge in demand for baby milk from both expats in China and concerned local mothers.
Four years after a major scandal in which tainted baby milk powder led to the deaths of six children the health concerns still haven’t gone away. In June China's biggest milk producer, Yili, recalled baby formula tainted with "unusual" levels of mercury.
Last month Hunan Ava Dairy recalled baby formula sold under its Nanshan Bywise brand after a cancer-causing agent was found in test samples. And earlier this week China’s Bright Dairy & Food company was forced to recall batches of sour milk after complaints by almost 1,000 customers.
The scandal-hit dairy industry shows no signs of improvement, forcing thousands of worried mothers to turn to foreign producers for baby milk powder. Online British food stores have reported huge increases in business as a result.
Mark Callaghan, managing director at British Corner Shop, said: “China is yet to dispel the concern over its dairy products, so it is understandable that parents are taking no chances and looking for the comfort and trustworthiness of top-branded baby milk.
We are now doing more than 15 times the number of orders for baby milk that we were doing pre 2008, and we don’t expect this growth to slow down any time soon.”
The most popular brands sold include the British brands SMA, Aptamil and Cow & Gate and Germany’s Hipp, which have rigorous health and safety standards.
It is a similar story at Expat Essentials. Spokeswoman Yvonne Mills said: “Eight years ago, all of our baby milk customers were British expats or travellers, needing their familiar brand of baby formula.
About three years ago, however, we noticed that we were getting more and more Chinese customers buying from us and this part of the market has increased rapidly for us, to the point where now, about 85 per cent of our orders going to China would be for local Chinese rather than British expats.”
British food websites have also had lots of requests from Chinese companies wanting to set up their own businesses importing baby formula in bulk for resale.
In 2008, milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine killed six children and hospitalised nearly 300,000 in China. Since then the dairy industry has struggled to restore consumer confidence in baby milk powder as it lurches from one scandal to another.
