Ligao Foods Co.,Ltd.

Ligao Foods Co., Ltd. is a manufacturing company listed on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since 2021. The company specializes in the research, development, production, and sales of frozen baked goods and raw materials for baking. Its extensive product portfolio includes frozen semi-finished and finished baked goods such as mochi, tart shells, doughnuts, and cakes, along with various raw materials like cream, fruit products, sauces, oils, and meat floss. Ligao Foods offers nearly a thousand types and specifications of products, catering to the diverse procurement needs of its customers. The company operates three production bases with nine plants strategically located across major markets in China, including South, East, and North China. This nationwide layout enhances operational efficiency and reduces logistics costs, allowing Ligao Foods to meet customer demands effectively. Its marketing network spans all provinces and regions in China, excluding Taiwan, with a diversified sales strategy that includes baking shops, supermarkets, and catering channels. The company emphasizes high-quality customer service and technical support, fostering strong relationships with its clients and adapting to emerging market trends.

1. The rapid development of the baking industry, the gradual diversification of channels and the rising operating costs of the industry With the increasing diversification of the Chinese diet and the improvement of residents' consumption levels, the market size of the baking industry in China has continued to grow. Industry research data shows that in 2023, the domestic retail market size of baking products exceeded 550 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of nearly 10%, and it is expected that the baking retail market will exceed 850 billion yuan by 2029. Among them, the frozen baking industry in the baking industry has become a rapidly growing sub-sector driven by factors such as the improvement of cold chain technology and the increasing demand for cost reduction and efficiency improvement from enterprises. While the industry scale is growing rapidly, the sales channels and consumption scenarios of the industry are becoming increasingly diverse. Although traditional baking shops remain the primary purchase scenario, their proportion is showing a downward trend, while the proportion of emerging channels such as offline supermarkets and convenience stores, catering channels, tea and coffee shops, hotel buffets, and online O2O is increasing. These emerging channels usually do not take baking products as their main products, so they generally do not have professional baking chefs; however, from the perspective of improving store efficiency and meeting consumers' diverse needs, they still need to set up a certain number of baking products. In this necessary but not primary scenario, frozen baking becomes a better solution, which helps to increase the penetration rate of frozen baking more rapidly. In addition, the baking industry is still facing the pain point of high operating costs. One is that the proportion of rigid cost expenditures such as rent is relatively high; the other is that the labor cost remains at a high level, and with the impact of population aging and young people's career choices, the recruitment of baking chefs is becoming increasingly difficult, and some baking stores are forced to reduce the number of pure handmade products to a limited number of main products. Frozen baking, with its rich variety, convenient storage, and simple and quick operation, is essentially improving the efficiency of the complex baking industry, which is of great significance for cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the industry. 2. Marketing network construction, diversified sales channels and high-quality customer service The company has built a wide and deep marketing network layout, covering all provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and special administrative regions in China except Taiwan Province. It has established a diversified sales channel covering baking shops, beverage shops, supermarkets, catering, convenience stores, etc. The company adopts a distribution model with distribution as the main and direct sales as the auxiliary. For some customers with large purchase amounts or key development targets such as large chain baking shops and large chain catering enterprises, it adopts direct sales, with unified distribution and management by the company. The company provides high-frequency and high-quality services to customers, helping them improve management and operation capabilities, promote sales growth, and at the same time deeply bind the company's products with the finished products of customers to enhance customer stickiness. The company will provide on-site professional technical guidance to customers, such as the later processing and application of frozen baking products, cake decoration, etc. The company explores new customer needs and creates more diverse sales scenarios, such as summer-themed ice cream cakes and ice cream mochi to supplement the product lines of customers during the relatively quiet baking season. The company also frequently conducts large-scale service activities online and offline, creating a platform for industry insiders to exchange, enhancing customers' recognition of the company, and serving customers more efficiently. The company's service advantages not only enhance its customer development advantages but also further avoid the risk of customer loss. With the steady progress of the integration of the company's marketing team, the management of the company's sales team has become more refined and efficient. Under the expansion strategy of focusing on first- and second-tier cities and penetrating third- and fourth-tier cities, the company relies on more advanced technical service centers to provide more comprehensive and timely technical services to customers, improving the quality of the company's marketing network services. 3. Pan-national production capacity and warehousing layout To ensure the quality of use, the temperature of frozen baking-related products during transportation usually needs to be controlled at -18℃. The average freight cost per ton is relatively high compared to other frozen food industries, which makes it difficult for customers with long transportation distances or low transportation density to be developed. At present, the company has formed three major production bases in the surrounding areas of Guangzhou, Huzhou, Zhejiang, and Xinxiang, Henan. By taking advantage of the local cost of procurement, it has made appropriate capacity allocation and, relying on its own cold chain, has established multiple leased warehouses across the country. This enables the company to have strong economies of scale in production and transportation. At the supply chain level, better economies of scale usually mean better customer acquisition capabilities at the sales level. 4. Rich product matrix The company is positioned as a baking integrated service provider and has a significant advantage in product category diversity in the same industry. It offers a wide range of products, including cream, fruit products, sauces, chocolate, meat floss, and oils, as well as various frozen baked goods such as pastries and bread. This can fully meet the one-stop procurement and consumption demands of different types of downstream customers, improving the convenience of use for customers and providing more feasibility for simplifying supplier management.