Uni-President to sell JV stake (2)

Nissin Jinmailang, an instant noodle maker, once said it expected this cooperation to help it enter the Chinese beverage market, and that it aimed to control 20 percent of the tea drink market by 2009, news portal netease.com reported Tuesday.

But according to the US market research firm AC Nielsen, Jinmailang's tea drinks did not even account for 1 percent of the market in 2009.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that Tingyi's Master Kong held 40.2 percent of the tea drink market in China in the first nine months of 2012, followed by Uni-President, whose market share was 32.9 percent.

Uni-President, whose domestic performance is better in the south than in the north, wanted this investment to expand its business through access to the powerful northern sales channels Nissin Jinmailang had established from its base in Hebei, Yan told the Global Times Tuesday.

However, as a company that built its fortune out of noodles, Nissin Jinmailang's sales channels are mostly related to the domestic instant noodle sector and are less useful for beverage sales, he noted, adding that the domestic beverage market is mainly controlled by name brands including Master Kong and Coca-Cola.