Brand Marketing Empowers Industrial Upgrading, Packaging Innovation Activates New Momentum for the Dairy Industry — 2026 Dairy Brand Marketing and Packaging Innovation Development Forum Held in Shenzhen

On October 13, 2026, the 2026 Dairy Brand Marketing and Packaging Innovation Development Forum opened successfully. The forum was jointly hosted by Bohua Exhibition and Shanghai Ruinong Consulting, bringing together more than 100 representatives from the entire industry chain, including dairy processing, packaging materials and equipment, and brand marketing services, to focus on China's dairy brand building, product innovation and packaging upgrading pathways in the new development stage and to jointly explore new directions for high-quality industry development. Liu Chao, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Dairy Industry Association, attended the forum and delivered a speech.

Rooted in the New Stage of Stock-Market Transition, Collaborative Innovation Builds a Solid Foundation for Dairy Development

In his speech, Liu Chao said that China's dairy industry is currently in a critical period of deep adjustment, structural reshaping and industrial upgrading. Consumer demand is gradually shifting from “drinking milk” to “eating and using milk,” and huge development space lies in segmented tracks such as children's nutrition, dairy for middle-aged and elderly people, sports nutrition, functional dairy, and B2B commercial dairy. At the level of product innovation, the dairy industry shows characteristics of diversification and segmentation. Companies no longer pursue a single product that captures the national market, but instead develop new products around different consumer groups and diverse consumption scenarios. Product innovation is no longer limited to improving nutritional indicators such as protein and calcium; dairy products adapted to meal, office, social and outdoor sports scenarios have become the mainstream direction of new product development.

Liu Chao pointed out that B2B tracks such as bakery and tea beverages, chain restaurants, sports nutrition and functional foods are rising rapidly, and demand for deep-processed raw materials such as milk fat, whey, cheese and milk protein continues to climb, opening up new growth tracks. In the past, packaging innovation mostly focused on the C-end retail market; he called on packaging companies, while continuing to optimize C-end packaging, to base their work on real pain points in B2B storage, transportation, portioning and actual use, and to make precise iterations in packaging specifications, sealing processes, freshness-preservation technology, opening and closing design, and storage and transport standardization, helping deep-processed dairy products expand into the B2B market.

In the Stock-Market Era, China's Dairy Industry Must Grasp Six Major Trends and Drive New Growth through Brand and Packaging Innovation

Hou Junwei, General Manager of Shanghai Ruinong Dairy Brand Consulting, gave a keynote sharing session, combining detailed industry data to deeply analyze the current state of China's dairy market in 2026, its development trends, packaging iteration directions and brand growth methodologies.

Hou Junwei pointed out that China's dairy industry currently shows a development pattern of stable landscape, category differentiation and slowing overall growth. The competitive gap among leading companies continues to widen; chilled dairy maintains growth vitality; ambient categories press ahead under pressure; and the deep-processing track embraces development opportunities. The channel structure is changing rapidly: sales in offline distribution channels are declining, while online channels — especially online sales of chilled dairy products — are achieving rapid growth.

Ruinong Consulting judges that the industry has six core development trends: a freshness strategy becoming the focus of competition in the stock market; domestic substitution of deep-processed products opening up a hundred-billion-level market space; demographic changes driving demand for functional dairy; consumption application scenarios continuing to extend outward; a number of benchmark category brands emerging in segmented tracks; and structural adjustment of the industry becoming the core driver of growth.

In terms of packaging innovation, dairy packaging has evolved in five new directions: value-for-money consumption driving rising popularity of large family-size packs; the youth group giving rise to demand for small-format packaging; eco-friendly, low-carbon packaging becoming an important lever for gaining consumer trust; smart packaging such as one-item-one-code strengthening interactive consumer experiences; and multi-scenario adaptive packaging meeting differentiated consumption demands.

Addressing the challenge of companies breaking through to growth, he proposed three implementation strategies: first, achieving strategic growth through brand reshaping, building a complete brand value system, advancing category innovation and creating super hit products; second, achieving tactical growth by leveraging terminal media-ization, single-store breakthroughs and consumer education; third, driving reform of organizational management and channel models, and building an integrated omni-domain marketing and sales system to ensure sustainable corporate development. He stressed that dairy companies should go with the trend, coordinate the forces of brand, product, packaging and channels, and fully tap the structural growth dividends of the industry.

Digitalization Reshapes Community Fresh Milk Stores, Exploring a New Growth Path in the Dairy Stock Market

Wu Gang, General Manager of Pushi Digital Technology (Pushi Dairy), shared insights on innovative terminal models for the dairy industry in the stock market, and explained in detail Pushi's community fresh milk collection store chilled fresh milk operation model based on hands-on experience with 23 model stores over 21 months.

Wu Gang analyzed that the dairy industry chain has a notable capability mismatch: pastures lack terminal operation capabilities, dairy companies are not good at refined single-store operations, traditional milk bars have a weak digital foundation, and consumers find it hard to obtain stable and reliable fresh milk consumption channels. Traditional milk bars generally suffer from pain points such as difficulty in building trust, unstable quality control, a single product structure, low sales per unit area and low per-capita efficiency, and insufficient standardization; the lack of a digital operation system is the core root of the problem.

He proposed that breaking out in the stock market requires completing three major shifts: from selling products to delivering operational efficiency, from opening large stores to deploying ultra-small stores, and from experience-based operation to system-driven operation, using digitalization to restructure people, goods and place. Pushi avoids raw milk price fluctuations and heavy asset investment in nationwide cold chain, deeply cultivates the “last mile” of community consumption, and focuses on supply chain operations for existing milk bars, same-city traffic operations and store standardization management.

In the digital implementation of people, goods and place, Pushi built a self-developed data middle platform, connected multiple online channels such as mini-programs and Douyin, and achieved digitalized control of the entire process of data collection, ordering, pricing and marketing; upgraded the store brand visual system and built a complete store training system; and optimized the SKU product matrix, using digitalized control to keep the loss rate of short-shelf-life dairy products at 2%. Relying on accumulated system capabilities, it stabilizes its fresh milk consumer base, iterates its supply chain and fulfillment services, and makes up for the shortcomings of traditional milk bar operations.

Wu Gang said that in the face of competitive pressure from large dairy companies, the core competitiveness of small and medium-sized terminal stores lies in system operation efficiency. Verified through model store practice, Pushi has refined a replicable community fresh milk collection store operation model, offering a brand-new approach for the offline terminal development of the chilled dairy industry.

Component Restructuring Opens a New Cycle of Dairy Innovation, Unlocking the Codes of Nutrition and Taste with Technology

Wang Guanghui, General Manager of Jinan Henghui Keji Co., Ltd., delivered a keynote speech, assessing the industry's development stage and interpreting the pathways to dairy product innovation based on raw material technology practice.

Wang Guanghui reviewed the four rounds of competitive iteration in China's dairy industry and proposed that 2026 is the “first year of dairy splitting and recombination,” with industry competition upgrading from competing on milk sources and protein concentration to milk component splitting and functional recombination. Driven by three factors — price fluctuations of imported whey raw materials, the release of segmented consumer demand, and companies' pursuit of value upgrading — dairy R&D has moved from a simple ingredient-selection stage into a brand-new stage of “creating” according to consumption scenarios.

He introduced that domestic milk splitting technology has gone through physical rough separation and membrane-based quality improvement, and has now developed into a third-generation era of precise component recombination, achieving graded separation of components such as casein and whey protein through combinations of multiple technologies and processes, laying a solid technological foundation for differentiated product innovation. With the rapid rise of high-protein and functional consumption, new products such as high-protein beverages and specialty yogurt are emerging one after another, but the industry still faces technical challenges such as product syneresis, powdery mouthfeel and insufficient thermal stability.

Wang Guanghui presented several innovative technology solutions, including instant-dissolving concentrated milk protein, MCI micellar casein, dry-eating yogurt powder, ambient refreshing drinkable yogurt and an overseas-market yogurt powder, balancing product texture stability, controllable cost and clean-label requirements, and covering diverse application scenarios such as chilled yogurt, high-protein dairy drinks, commercial retail and overseas OEM production.

He noted that the value of ingredient companies goes beyond raw material supply; they should provide full-chain supporting services from formula customization and co-creation of new products to overseas market launch, working in deep collaboration with dairy companies to tap the nutrition and flavor potential brought by component technology and help the industry achieve differentiated product breakthroughs.

In the Era of Stock-Market Competition, Packaging Companies Accelerate Dairy Product Innovation with Full-Chain Capabilities

Guo Kun, Head of Products and Categories at Lemei Packaging, gave a keynote sharing session, analyzing the current development of the dairy stock market and introducing Lemei's practice of empowering dairy companies' new product development through lean management and an innovation ecosystem.

Guo Kun pointed out that the overall dairy market is currently under pressure, with B2B channels iterating and renewing and the C-end demographic structure shifting, but the shift in consumption from “drinking milk” to “eating milk” brings structural incremental opportunities such as deep processing, G-end centralized procurement and product going overseas. The industry places three realistic requirements on dairy companies: faster new product iteration, leaner production line operation and management, and continuously lower trial-and-error costs for new products. The current survival rate of new products in the industry is only 15%-20%, and dairy companies urgently need full-chain innovation partners.

He highlighted Lemei's Knowledge Center pilot plant, which builds a full-chain new product incubation loop from concept ideation, formula testing, pilot verification and market trial sales to scaled launch. Backed by three capability engines — formula innovation, process and equipment solutions, and intelligent processing solutions — the platform covers six major categories including dairy products, plant-based products, tea and coffee composite beverages, and cheese, has accumulated tens of thousands of mature, validated formulas, and can complete process verification from small-batch trials to continuous production, combined with multi-machine packaging material filling tests, effectively shortening customers' R&D cycles.

At the same time, Lemei applies the concept of lean management throughout its entire business process, helping dairy companies reduce costs and increase efficiency by improving OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), optimizing CIP cleaning processes and iterating flexible production lines. Guo Kun said that the value of a packaging service provider is not limited to packaging material supply; it should also participate deeply in the early-stage R&D of products, connecting the complete chain of formula, process, packaging and market, to help high-quality products quickly complete commercialization and seize the structural growth opportunities of the industry.

This forum built an efficient dialogue and exchange platform for the entire dairy industry chain. Participating guests held thorough discussions around brand building, consumer insight, product iteration and packaging technology, sparking innovative ideas and building industry consensus, gathering wisdom and strength for the transformation and upgrading of China's dairy industry.