China's Adult Milk Powder Market: CN¥ 9.18bn Across Three Leading Marketplaces, 2023
By Quan Wenjun
7 min read
Executive Summary#
China's adult milk powder market generated CN¥ 9.18bn in combined online sales across three leading Chinese marketplaces in 2023 — up +16.1% year-on-year (YoY) — as the category absorbed growth vacated by a contracting infant formula segment. Euromonitor separately projects the total market, across all channels including offline retail, will reach CN¥ 24.82bn by 2026. Concentration among the largest players eased as more than 2,400 active brands competed for share, and the elderly milk powder sub-category delivered the period's standout performance at +53.0% YoY growth.
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A Decade of Unbroken Growth#
China's adult milk powder market has posted unbroken growth for a decade. The structural driver is demographic: as the national birth rate declines and the population ages rapidly, the adult milk powder category has emerged as the strategic "second growth curve" for China's major dairy brands — filling the gap left by a contracting infant formula market.
Online sales across three leading Chinese marketplaces reached CN¥ 9.18bn in 2023. The total industry is substantially larger: it takes in offline supermarkets, hypermarkets and specialty stores, and also the online channels those three marketplaces do not cover. On Euromonitor's separate total-market series, category value is projected to reach CN¥ 24.82bn by 2026.
What that forecast describes is steady compounding rather than a step change. No year in the 2016–2026E series sits below the year before it, and the annual increments narrow as the market matures. For a category whose demand is driven by an ageing population rather than by fashion cycles, that steadiness is the point: it is what makes adult nutrition a credible second growth curve for portfolios exposed to a shrinking infant formula base.
Adult milk powder market will reach CN¥ 24.82bn by 2026E (Euromonitor)
Channel Structure: Online Growth Is Re-accelerating#
Growth in the online channel settled back to trend after the pandemic-era surge, then re-accelerated sharply. Sales across the three leading marketplaces in this dataset grew +3.0% in 2021 and +7.3% in 2022 as demand normalised, before rebounding to +16.1% in 2023 — evidence of the category's underlying resilience and of the enduring consumer appeal of adult nutrition products.
Online sales growth re-accelerated to +16.1% in 2023
What changed most in 2023 was not only the pace of online growth but its composition. Demand is migrating away from search-and-cart purchasing toward content-driven discovery — short video, livestream and social recommendation formats in which the product is encountered before it is searched for. Adult milk powder suits that shift unusually well: it is a considered, explanation-heavy purchase in which formulation claims, ingredient provenance and trust signals need narrative space that a search results page does not give them.
Demand is also consolidating into brand-owned storefronts, where the brand controls the shelf, the product messaging and the after-sales relationship. Authenticity is the category's primary purchase barrier, and the storefront formats that answer it most directly are where the category's growth is concentrating. For brands, this reframes channel strategy: breadth of distribution matters less than owning a channel-native storefront and the content operation that feeds it.
Price Premiumisation Accelerates#
The adult milk powder market is experiencing clear premiumisation, with the CN¥ 300–500 tiers gaining share at the expense of the sub-CN¥ 200 mainstream. The CN¥ 300–400 price tier nearly doubled its share, from 6.7% in 2022 to 11.9% in 2023 — the most dramatic single-tier shift in the 2021–2023 data period — while the CN¥ 400–500 tier more than doubled from 2.2% to 4.7%.
Sales shift into the CN¥ 300–500 tiers as premiumisation accelerates
Because tier shares must sum to 100%, the gains in the CN¥ 300–500 band are mirrored by an eroding weight in the entry-price tiers — but in a category growing at double digits, a smaller slice of a larger pie is not the same as shrinking demand: both entry tiers still grew in absolute terms across 2023. Average unit prices also moved up across the 2021–2023 period, driven both by list-price increases and by a deliberate strategic repositioning of the leading portfolios toward premium formulations.
This bifurcation creates a clear choice for brands: compete at mass-market scale in the entry tiers, where volume is large but pricing power is thin, or pursue the faster-growing premium segment, where margins are higher and brand-equity barriers are actively being built.
Brand Landscape: A Fragmenting Field#
The adult milk powder competitive landscape is fragmenting at pace. Concentration among the largest players eased in 2023 — the most pronounced single-year easing in the 2019–2023 data period. With over 2,400 active brands now competing in the space, demand is dispersing across a broad long tail, and scale on its own no longer defends position: the leading cohort collectively ceded ground even as the category itself grew at double digits.
What separates the brands gaining ground is less size than a repeatable set of attributes:
- Channel-native distribution. The fastest risers built their businesses inside content-led commerce rather than porting an offline playbook onto a new surface — treating the storefront, the content, and the community as one operation.
- International provenance. Cross-border brands used imported formulations and an origin story as a shortcut to trust in a category where trust is the primary purchase barrier, capturing share without the distribution footprint incumbents spent decades building.
- Social-led brand building. Celebrity partnerships and campaign-driven engagement on major social platforms generated outsized reach for brands willing to fund them, converting attention into flagship-store demand.
- Sub-category focus. Rather than spreading across the category's three sub-categories, challengers concentrated on one demand occasion and built packaging, pricing, and messaging around it.
The elderly milk powder sub-category was the period's defining story: +53.0% YoY growth expanded its share from 29.9% to 39.4% of the adult milk powder market in a single year. This surge is driven not only by demographics but by younger consumers — the 21–35 age cohort — actively purchasing health products for their aging parents. That is a gifting-oriented demand model rather than a self-consumption one, and it carries distinct implications: gift-appropriate packaging and price points, festival-weighted seasonality, and messaging aimed at the purchaser rather than the end consumer. Brands that read the sub-category as a demographic play alone consistently mis-specified the buyer.
Key Takeaways#
- CN¥ 9.18bn in sales across three leading Chinese marketplaces in 2023 (+16.1% YoY); Euromonitor separately projects the total market, across all channels, to reach CN¥ 24.82bn by 2026.
- Elderly milk powder grew +53.0% YoY, expanding its share from 29.9% to 39.4% — the defining structural shift of the period, and a gifting-driven one.
- Concentration among the largest players eased as 2,400+ active brands fragmented demand; scale alone no longer defends position.
- Online growth re-accelerated from +3.0% in 2021 and +7.3% in 2022 to +16.1% in 2023, and its composition is shifting toward content-led discovery and brand-controlled storefronts.
- Premiumisation is accelerating: the CN¥ 300–400 price tier nearly doubled its share (6.7% → 11.9%) and the CN¥ 400–500 tier more than doubled (2.2% → 4.7%).
About the Data#
This analysis draws on Moojing Market Intelligence's proprietary e-commerce analysis and social listening platform. E-commerce data covers three leading Chinese marketplaces. Sales data period: January 2021 – December 2023. Consumer-review analysis draws on product reviews for selected leading dairy brands, sampled from those same marketplaces.
Market size projections are sourced from Euromonitor International. The two sources are on different bases and are not directly comparable: every Moojing sales figure and growth rate here describes those three marketplaces only, while the Euromonitor series describes total category value across all channels, including offline retail and online channels outside that set. No online-penetration share is stated in this article: a ratio taken between the two would divide a three-marketplace figure by an all-channel total and would not describe either scope.
Source: Moojing Market Intelligence
This content adheres to Moojing's editorial standards .
Frequently Asked Questions
CN¥ 9.18 billion in online sales in 2023, up +16.1% year on year, with third-party projections putting the total market including offline channels at CN¥ 24.82 billion by 2026. Online accounts for 25.3% of total sales, so the e-commerce figure is a leading indicator rather than the whole market. The structural driver is demographic: as the birth rate falls and the population ages, adult milk powder has become the strategic second growth curve for China's major dairy brands, absorbing growth vacated by a contracting infant formula segment.
Unbroken for a decade, though not smooth. The 2020 spike of +44.3% reflected pandemic pantry-stocking and heightened health consciousness; 2021 and 2022 at +3.0% and +7.3% represented demand normalising back to trend; and the 2023 rebound to +16.1% demonstrates underlying resilience rather than a one-off. Reading those four years together is the useful exercise — a brand that took the 2020 number as its new baseline would have mis-planned 2021, and one that took 2021 as the trend would have under-invested for 2023.
Clearly, and in a specific band. The CN¥ 300–400 price tier nearly doubled its share from 6.7% in 2022 to 11.9% in 2023 — the most dramatic single-tier shift in the period measured — and the CN¥ 400–500 tier more than doubled from 2.2% to 4.7%, both gaining at the expense of the sub-CN¥ 200 mainstream. Average unit prices rose roughly CN¥ 20–30 across 2021 to 2023. That is a market where the middle and upper tiers are being built rather than one trading down, which is unusual in the current Chinese consumer environment and worth treating as a real signal.
The defining structural shift of the period. Elderly milk powder grew +53.0% year on year and expanded from 29.9% to 39.4% of the adult milk powder market in a single year. Demographics explain part of it but not the mechanism — a large share of the buying comes from the 21-35 cohort purchasing health products for ageing parents. That makes it a gifting-oriented demand model with distinct implications for packaging, channel and messaging: the buyer and the consumer are different people, the purchase carries an element of care signalling, and presentation matters more than it would in a self-purchase. Meanwhile the five largest brands' combined share fell to 45.5% as more than 2,400 active brands fragment demand, and every one of them lost share despite growing sales.
