Hard facts about Chinese companies: Unearthing the art of being competitive in a Chinese market
What are the most competitive and innovative food and beverage companies in China?
Kweichow Moutai Co. Ltd, a partially publicly traded, partially state-owned firm that produces and sells the baijiu spirit Moutai, reached the top spot in the F&B survey thanks in large part to its consistent business performance – despite the personal scandals of its former chairman – in combination with radical digital experiments and their fast-paced ecosystem building. It is a dancing elephant. Moreover, to diversify its leadership team, recently the company announced the first female leader in the top job in its history.
The Coca-Cola Company, with its highly impressive performance, ranked second. The iconic American company did well across the board in this survey of the Chinese scene in supply chain, customer insights, business diversity, and brand value measures. Its success can be appreciated even more by comparing it to that of PepsiCo, which works in partnership with a local company in China and yet lags behind its competitors. The company excels at balancing building core resilience while exploring new revenue growth opportunities, especially leveraging its top-notch consumer data and analytics capabilities.
Mengniu Dairy Company Limited, with headquarters in Mongolia, manufacturing and distributing dairy products and ice cream, came third. Digitally speaking, it closes the loop from the grass in the field to cows and milk production, all the way to the table of the consumer. Their wide embrace of AI on the farm and with their partners is exemplified especially when they launched the first-ever GPT-enabled AI nutrition expert.
