An Australian company has apologized to mothers after its premium organic baby milk formula flew off supermarket shelves ahead of China’s Singles Day buying frenzy yesterday.
Consumers spent US$9 billion in the first 12 hours of Singles Day, a 24-hour retailing bonanza that is the world’s biggest online shopping day, with infant formula maker Bellamy’s Organic caught up its the wake.
Bellamy’s, based in the southern island of Tasmania, apologized to its Australian customers in a Facebook post on Tuesday after complaints they were unable to buy the formula, nicknamed “white gold,” at their local stores.
Photo: Reuters
“We understand at this time, it is difficult to source our range of products and acknowledge the frustration this causes,” the company said.
Bellamy’s chief executive Laura McBain said the huge demand from China, which started before Singles Day, had “taken us by surprise.”
“As a result, supermarket shelves in Australia are being wiped out. We didn’t anticipate we’d have a situation where mums couldn’t access our products,” McBain told the Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday.
The shortage of products in Australian stores is believed to be caused by some customers buying the formula in bulk and then reselling them online to Chinese shoppers.
Demand for foreign infant milk products has soared following a series of food scares in China, including a 2008 scandal over locally produced tainted formula that left six children dead and made more than 300,000 ill.
Brand owner Bellamy’s Australia, which listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in August last year, has seen its shares rocket from its A$1 (US$0.71) offer price to trade above A$10.00 in just 15 months.
IG Markets’ analyst Angus Nicholson said the rise was a reflection of the demand for “new China stocks” — companies that cater to the country’s middle-class consumers.
“It’s seen a huge spike just this week, and a lot of it has been driven by the Singles Day sales in China,” Nicholson said.
“It’s almost been completely impossible for consumers in Australia and New Zealand to get hold of infant formula powder ... because it’s all been shipped off to China for this bulk-buying on online sales Web sites,” she said.
Nicholson said a number of other Australian companies, such as vitamins and supplements maker Blackmores, have also seen their stocks perform “very strongly.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the