Guangdong Yashili Group Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 广东雅士利集团股份有限公司) is a leading privately owned infant formula and soymilk products company in China.
[6] Zhang Lidian is on the Chinese committee of the International Dairy Federation, and serves as a representative for Guangdong province in the National People's Congress.
In 2008, a crisis occurred in China in which melamine-tainted powdered milk was found being produced by a large number of Chinese dairy manufacturers.
Melamine was found in 22 out of 109 manufacturers tested including industry majors Mengniu, Yili, Bright Dairy and Yashili.
[12] Yashili International said the melamine incident had caused it a total loss of 787 million yuan in 2008, which were mainly attributable to the costs and expenses relating to product recalls and decreased sales in the second half of 2008.
The Legal Weekly[15] claimed that the Shanxi Yashili Dairy Company had repackaged 30 tonnes of contaminated milk powder as new product.
Yashili agreed to a 3 million yuan deal, but secretly recorded the conversation and reported Guo Li to the police for blackmailing.
Yashili sell its products via a comprehensive national sales and distribution network, which covers all regions within mainland China.
Yashili also sells its products to 15,000 maternal and child stores, which it claims had pushed up market share in this channel, bringing new growth points for the Group's performance.
The company's extensive milk powder products distribution network is formed by more than 2,300 marketing staff under the support of over 600 liaison locations.
In the company's 2012 interim report Yashili noted that "All of our branded paediatric milk formula products are mainly produced by imported premium raw materials procured from New Zealand".
[19] An interactive internet event named “Experience excellent milk sources with a trip in New Zealand” was held in 2012 with 5 million participants.
[21] In January 2013 Yashili International Holdings announced plans to build a processing plant in New Zealand, its first major offshore investment.
[22][23] For the six months ended 30 June 2012, Yashili group's revenue amounted to RMB1,689.1 million, a 17.0% increase compared to the same period of the preceding year.
Euromonitor forecast that compound annual growth rate from 2011 to 2016 would be 15.6%, while the 2016 market size will reach RMB128.4 billion.
[25] Yashili is one of the largest local Chinese manufacturers of infant formula which includes Yili and Beingmate.