Anchor breaks new sales record at China's Double 11

Anchor products shone at Double 11, the world’s largest 24-hour shopping event, with Fonterra sales jumping 31% on last year.

President of Fonterra China, Christina Zhu, says Fonterra achieved another strong result with an estimated total of $28 million (132 million RMB) in the Double 11 sales period, across the Anchor, Anmum and Anlene brands.

“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.” Ms Zhu says.

All Fonterra products were available during Double 11. Anmum sales increased 41% on last year. Online platforms (JD and Tmall) sales of Anchor cream, cheese and butter sales doubled to over $1 million (5 million RMB). Twelve 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% higher than last year and 25% higher than our competitors.”

More than 30 million people visited the Anchor online store within 24 hours. The equivalent of 8400 tonnes of product was 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,” says Ms 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,” says Ms Zhu.

Over the past five years, Fonterra China has sold the equivalent of around 1 billion glasses of Anchor milk to Chinese consumers.

Double 11 is a massive global retail sale held on China’s ‘Single’s Day’ holiday. According to data from Alibaba, the event returned US$31 billion in turnover this year alone, with one billion orders placed.

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