site.bta Chinese Company with Seven-year History of Momchilovtsi Village Yoghurt Production

Chinese Company with Seven-year History of Momchilovtsi Village Yoghurt Production

Smolyan, Southern Bulgaria, September 12 (BTA) - Tourism
Minister Nikolina Angelkova unveiled the first festival
dedicated to yoghurt and titled "Rhodope Traditions" in the
village of Momchilovtsi.

The guests of the festival include a 37-member delegation from
the Chinese company Bright Dairy, which has been producing
Momchilovtsi products for seven years now and is the organizer
and sponsor of the festival.
   
Momchilovtsi yoghurt has become a favourite brand of the Chinese
 in the last seven years, the CEO of Bright Diary said. The
yoghurt bearing the name of the Rhodope village has brought the
company over 200 million yuan.
   
The dairy festival in Momchilovtsi will continue until September
 13 and the organisers intend to turn it into an international
event.

Shanghai-based Bright Dairy & Food's net profit rose 30.4
percent in 2013 to 406 million yuan ($65.9 million) on strong
demand, particularly for its fresh milk, yogurt and UHT milk
products. It benefitted from its U best premium product series
and the star product, Momchilovtsi yogurt contributed 20 percent
 of total operating revenue. Sales of Momchilovtsi more than
doubled to 3.22 billion yuan.

In 2014, Bright Dairy's revenue is forecast to be 18.7 billion
yuan and profits 474 million yuan. It is among the top-tier
dairy companies in China, with a 6.9 percent market share last
year, according to research firm Euromonitor International.

Following additional research and preparations, Bright launched
its new brand of Momchilovtsi Yogurt in December 2010, setting
up an alliance of sorts with a small village in the Balkans,
relying on its bacteria for yogurt production and on its
inhabitants for public relations.

To produce the Momchilovtsi label, China imports from Bulgaria
Lactobacillus bulgaricus, the lactobacterium L99, which is
widespread in the country's latitude zone. It induces natural
milk-acid fermentation, which leads to the yoghurt formation.
The bacterium was first discovered and introduced in 1905 by
Stamen Grigorov, a Bulgarian studying medicine in Geneva.

The village of Momchilovtsi is located in Bulgaria's scenic
Rhopode Mountains. According to the latest available data from
2005, the local population amounts to 1,456.  According to
unsubstantiated accounts, the village is home to some of the
world's oldest people, allegedly thanks to the local yogurt.
Bright Dairy stumbled upon Momchilovtsi during a research trip
in 2008. As legend and Bulgarian media has it, the Chinese
explorers were charmed by the village's beauty and the kindness
of its people. The yogurt is sold in China, but it contains
Momchilovtsi's bacteria, draws on Bulgarian imagery and folklore
 in its advertising and packaging, and its web site is plastered
 with slogans in Cyrillic script.

The Momchilovtsi message of longevity and health appealed to
Chinese consumers and sales are expected to reach RMB 1.5
billion this year. Since its launch, the Chinese-Bulgarian
product line won several international awards for hygiene and
taste.