This week we look at Swisse Wellness’ impressive financials, nutricosmetics success, and China’s new e-Commerce rules.
First up and we look at the performance of Health and Happiness (H&H), best known in the US for its acquisition of Australian supplements brand Swisse Wellness. H&H posted revenues of about US$669m for the first half of 2018, an increase of almost 29% than the same period last year.
The core performing segments were baby nutrition and care (BNC) and adult nutrition and care (ANC), which contributed about 61% and 39% of total revenue.
The ANC business grew 22.5% from last year, with main contributor to this growth being Swisse, which re-entered the US market a year ago a three-year hiatus.
Sales of Swisse supplement products rose 29.3% in the first half of 2018, due to strong growth momentum in Chinese and Australian markets.
In Australia, strong marketing and sponsorships of sports events such as the Winter Olympics and Australian Football League have driven sales.
As for China, H&H continued Swisse’s earlier success in cross border e-commerce (CBEC) by introducing Swisse to more platforms.
Nutricosmetics
The “beauty-from-within” category is growing impressively in the US, with collagen-based products driving much of this. The recent Tmall annual Super Brand Day sales event showed that Japanese and French nutricosmetics products proved the best performers during for Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail.
A summary from Tmall indicated that sales of Biocyte, a French nutricosmetics brand, were 60 times higher than that of last year. Japanese products also performed well, with sales of Pola rising by 30 times, and Esthe Prolabo’s “Seven factor Gelee” collagen product was sold out within 24 hours of the event.
Nutricosmetics are most popular with consumers between the age of 26 to 30, according to a separate report by Tmall, with this group of consumers making up 43% of the total number of consumers.
NutraIngredients-USA will host a free-to-attend Beauty-from Within webinar on Thursday, Sept. 20 at 1 pm Eastern. The expert panel includes Dawna Venzon, Principal Research Scientist at Amway Nutrilite; Sarah Greenfield, director of education at HUM Nutrition; Taryn Forrelli, VP of Product at Olly; David Tyrrell, Global Skincare Analyst at Mintel; and Simon Pitman, Senior Editor of CosmeticsDesign.com. You can register for the 60-minute roundtable discussion CLICKING HERE.
Probiotic acquisition
Also in the headlines last week was the announcement that BY-HEALTH had officially completed its acquisition of Australian probiotics firm Life-Space Group (LSG) for US$483m.
The acquisition of LSG is also a “key move” for BY-HEALTH’s entry into the global market, said BY-HEALTH CEO Lin Zhi Cheng.
China contributed nearly half of APAC probiotics sales, amounting to US$8.5bn, and the country’s probiotic market forecast to reach US$15bn by 2025.
Chinese e-Commerce
We covered reports from New Zealand of a shake-up in China’s cross-border e-commerce rules in last week’s round-up, and this week Chinese officials have confirmed the changes.
The new e-commerce laws, which will come into effect on January 1, 2019, state that domestic websites should offer greater protection for consumer rights.
The new law also called for the establishment of “a complete set of regulatory system”, which spans across customs clearance, taxation, inspection and quarantine, and payment methods to regulate cross-border e-commerce (CBEC).
Further implementation guidance, including implications in respect of the CBEC grace period (due to expire on December 31), is expected in the coming months.
The authorities said that the arrangements are meant to make the processes of CBEC more convenient, improve monitoring procedures, and facilitate information exchange.
The New Zealand Trade and Enterprise said that the regulations might affect supplement and functional food firms.
