The food products company Oatly prepares to launch its oat milk in China. The target market is the country’s 230 million schoolchildren. Working alongside Chinese health authorities, Oatly is conducting a test program in which 250 children in each of two schools outside Peking are being served the Landskrona company’s especially formulated oat drink.

Studies in Lund show that the drink is very suitable as a conveyor of vitamins and minerals. The Chinese Ministry of Health has carried out a study revealing that many children’s development and growth are impeded as a consequence of insufficient ingestion of vitamins and minerals. In China there are 230 million children between the ages of 7 and 18.The special drink Oatly is developing is thus a unique beverage aimed at China, and the ambition is to capture 10 percent of the market. The company is also planning for its own production in the country.“It can naturally be a considerable piece of business if we can gain a few percent of this market,” says Rickard Öste.

“The first sub-study is underway, and we have had comparatively few dropouts. Our oat milk is clearly appreciated by the Chinese schoolchildren. We are also working on cooperation with Chinese oat interests for processing and production,” says Professor Rickard Öste, who founded Oatly and its sister company Aventure, which is leading the current study. The first preliminary results will be ready within the year, and the project has cost a couple of million Swedish kronor so far. “Oat milk will be cheaper in the long run because the requisite cultivation space and investments are much lower for the same production volume,” says Rickard Öste.

(Dagens Industri, 7/1, 2009)