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Anchor’s sales leap 31 per cent at 11.11 festival

anchor-creamDairy giant Fonterra has reported that sales of its Anchor products jumped by 31 per cent at Alibaba’s 11.11 Shopping Festival at the weekend, compared to the 2017 event.

Fonterra China president, Christina Zhu, said it earned an estimated total of $28 million (132 million RMB) across the Anchor, Anmum and Anlene brands during the festival.

“Anchor UHT was a crowd favourite, 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.

All of Fonterra’s products were available during 11.11. Anmum sales increased by 41 per cent from 2017. Sales of Anchor cream, cheese and butter on JD and Tmall doubled to over $1 million (5 million RMB). The dairy giant reported that 12 tonnes of Anchor unsalted butter was sold, 22 times the amount sold last year.

“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 per cent higher than last year and 25 per cent higher than our competitors.”

More than 30 million shoppers visited the Anchor online store within the 24 hour period and 8,400 tonnes of dairy products were sold.

“While Kiwis have known Anchor for generations, Anchor was only launched in China five years ago. Now it’s one of the top brands in its category,” said Zhu.

“This is because we’ve really concentrated on building the brand, with a big focus on smart digital marketing over the past five years. There’s also a huge team effort behind Double 11 – our people give it their all, and these results are a recognition of the passion of the team on the ground.

“The natural goodness and ‘New Zealand-ness’ that’s strongly associated with the brand gives consumers confidence in the brand’s taste, quality, and, most importantly, its safety. Consumers trust Anchor and, for these reasons, our products are considered premium. We’re proud to be taking our farmers’ milk to the world. Double 11 is world’s largest shopping event in a market worth US$800 billion, but ultimately for us it’s about building the Anchor brand in China and selling more of our farmers milk as high-value products.”

Fonterra China said for the last five years, it has sold around 1 billion Anchor milk  glasses to Chinese consumers. Alibaba’s 2018 11.11 Shopping Festival returned US$31 billion in turnover and consumers placed one billion orders online.

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