Milk powder to go on sale at pharmacies

Milk powder in China will go on the shelves of pharmaceutical stores starting from October, according to a discussion held on Wednesday by an academic center affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce, reported the 21st Business Daily on Wednesday.

The discussion aimed to establish a unified purchase, distribution and sales scheme to introduce milk powder to pharmacies.

Representatives of milk powder producers including Nestle, Dumex and Mead Johnson and chain drug stores such as China Resources, Cachet and Sinopharm were invited to the meeting.

The ministry plans to complete the project in three phases in two and half years from 2013 to 2015.

Pilot projects will be put in place in Beijing and Jiangsu province starting from October to the Spring Festival at the beginning of the next year. Twenty drug stores in Beijing will set up milk powder sections. After the Spring Festival, 100 cities with high purchasing power will be selected for the second batch of pilot programs in 10,000 stores. By 2015, another 10,000 stores will be added, making the total number of cities 400.

"We hope that the system can achieve 20 percent market share in two and a half years," said Xu Jing, head of the academic center. "That will be 15 billion yuan ($2.45 billion) out of the 70 billion yuan total market value."

The purchase and distribution will be conducted by the ministry and terminal sales will be done solely through vendor machines to guarantee the quality of the products, Xu said.