The dairy industry is an important industry related to the national economy and people’s livelihood, and it is also an important fulcrum for a healthy China, rural revitalisation, scientific and technological self-reliance and economic security. The Party and the state attach great importance to the development of the dairy industry. With the joint efforts of all walks of life in the industry, China has made remarkable achievements in the in-depth processing of dairy products, nutritional research and intelligent production. However, it still faces new challenges between the development mode, industrial structure and market demand. Despite facing many challenges, China’s dairy industry has been actively seeking breakthroughs and transformation. Under the overall guidance and support of the government, enterprises attach great importance to and continue to invest in technological innovation to become the core engine driving the high-quality development of China’s dairy industry. In nutrition and health, deep processing, intelligent manufacturing, biological manufacturing, green low-carbon technology Important breakthroughs have been made in art and other fields. In order to create a model of dairy product innovation and industrial upgrading, and help the high-quality development of China’s dairy industry, the China Dairy Industry Association organised industry experts to systematically sort out the top ten achievements of scientific and technological innovation in China’s dairy industry in 2025 through result collection, literature analysis, industrial research and other ways. The following is hereby released.

The exclusive strain of domestic infant matching

The early 1000 days of life is the golden window period for intestinal flora colonisation and immune system development. As the core functional substrate for the intestinal micro-ecology construction of infants and young children, probiotics have gained international consensus on their health efficacy. However, China’s infant probiotics have long faced bottlenecks such as dependence on imports of core strains and unclear targets, which has become a core shortcoming that restricts the high-quality development of China’s infant nutrition and health industry.

The National Dairy Technology Innovation Centre, together with Yili Group, carried out an independent attack and successfully isolated the infant subspecies YLGB-1496 of Bifidobacterium Chang from the breast milk of healthy mothers in China. It has been confirmed by authoritative institutions such as China Agricultural University that this strain can make efficient use of breast milk oligosaccharides (HMO), significantly reduce the incidence of eczema and respiratory infection symptoms in infants and young children, improve intestinal comfort, reduce the incidence of diarrhoea and the severity of symptoms, and effectively help the establishment and development of the immune system in early life. With solid safety and efficacy evidence such as whole genome sequencing and multi-centre clinical trials, YLGB-1496 has been officially included in the National Health Commission’s List of Bacteria Available for Infant Food.

YLGB-1496 is the first Bifidobacterium strain independently developed and approved by China. It has broken the long-term monopoly of probiotic strains for infants and young children by foreign countries, and realises the autonomy and control of the whole chain from strain screening, efficacy verification to large-scale production. The successful approval of this strain marks that China has made a key leap from “technology following” to “independent leading” in the field of infant probiotics, providing solid scientific and technological support for improving the core competitiveness of domestic infant formula milk powder and ensuring the safety of the national dairy supply chain.

Innovative application of sn-2 DHA functional lipid

Functional lipids are an important part of early nutrition of infants and young children. DHA is an indispensable key nutritional factor for the cognitive and visual development of infants and young children. However, compared with breast milk, traditional DHA mostly adopts non-sn-2 esterification form or random distribution structure, and the absorption efficiency and metabolic utilisation rate are low, which restricts the upgrading of infant brain nutrition from “component supplementation” to “structural precision nutrition”.

Junlebao and other dairy enterprises and scientific research institutes jointly tackled the situation. Based on the proprietary microbial fermentation, low-temperature extraction and physical refining technology system, they took the lead in launching high-sn-2 DHA algae oil. Sn-2 DHA accounts for as high as 50% of the total DHA ratio, which is very close to the natural distribution of DHA in breast milk. While accurately simulating the nutritional composition and proportion of DHA of breast milk, the upgrade of DHA from “content enhancement” to “structural delivery” has been realised. Compared with conventional DHA, sn-2 DHA places more emphasis on the accuracy of fatty acid location, which helps to improve the stable release and absorption and utilisation efficiency of DHA in the process of digestion. It has the comprehensive advantages of more bionic structure, more efficient absorption, more scientific formula, and more prominent industrial barriers.

The development and application of sn-2 DHA marks the important transformation of China’s functional lipid research from single nutrition enhancement to breast milk affinity structure innovation, and provides a new technical path for the high-quality development of infant formula. At present, sn-2 DHA has been applied in products such as Junlebao, Mengniu, Feihe, etc., which has improved the scientific and technological content and core competitiveness of domestic infant formula milk powder, and provided representative scientific and technological support for China’s dairy industry to move from “following the formula” to “structural innovation”.

New probiotics targeting intestinal orphan receptors

As the core functional base of nutritional and health products, the health efficacy of probiotics has become an international consensus. However, China’s core strains rely heavily on imports, and there are biosafety hazards and international trade risks. At the same time, traditional probiotics generally have bottlenecks such as unclear targets and insufficient efficacy, resulting in insufficient precise regulation of strains, which has become a difficult problem that restricts the high-quality development of the industry.

Mengniu, Yili, Junlebao, Bright, Sanyuan, Weigang and other enterprises, together with colleges and universities, have tackled the precise selection of strains and in-depth cracking of functional mechanisms. Among them, Mengniu and China Agricultural University successfully selected and obtained independent intellectual property rights from the intestines of the long-lived people in Bama, Guangxi. (CGMCC No.17827), through cooperation with top teams such as Peking University, its unique glucose-lowering mechanism was revealed for the first time: Lc19 metabolism produces a new bioactive substance – tryptophan-cholic acid (Trp-CA), which specifically activates the intestinal orphan receptor MRGPRE, and then Stimulate L cells to secrete glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) to realise the precise regulation of blood sugar homeosis. This breakthrough original achievement was published in the top international journal Cell, marking that China’s basic research in the field of food science has reached the world’s leading level.

The strain Lc19 won the “Annual Excellent Blood Sugar Health Raw Material Award” at the 9th Asian International Dairy Innovation Summit, and was successfully applied to the “Antang Shield” series of probiotic powder and milk powder and other products, which not only broke the long-term monopoly of foreign strains, but also marked the successful entry of Chinese dairy enterprises into the global “precise nutrition” innovation chain. High-value links have opened up a new development path for the industry based on local scientific research and serving the world.

The first GOSS system to realise the flexible production of milk ingredients

Deep processing is the key engine that drives the value of raw milk to jump. Its core lies in the efficient separation and high-value utilisation of milk source materials. However, the traditional milk source ingredient production line mostly focusses on the extraction and separation of a single group, and there are common pain points such as low raw milk utilisation rate, high production line switching cost, lack of flexible production capacity and difficulty in adapting to diversified market demand.

The first GOSS system (non-destructive orderly analysis system) in the Mongolian milk industry realises the orderly separation of core milk-based raw materials such as milk fats, milk proteins and whey, so that the value of raw milk is increased by more than 3 times. While improving the extraction efficiency, the nutritional value of active substances is preserved to the greatest extent. Relying on this core technology, Mengniu has independently designed and built 7 industry-leading “milk cube” flexible co-line production lines, which can process 600 tons of raw milk per day and can flexibly switch between a variety of products such as lactoferrin, desalted whey and miceller casein, completely breaking the long-term limitation of deep processing in the domestic dairy industry to a single product model. The barrier has realised the leap from “single-line single product” to “multi-category flexible common line”. The key performance and quality of the prepared products meet the national standards: the purity of lactoferrin is more than 95%, and the desalination rate of D90 desalination whey powder exceeds 90%. At present, the achievement is not only applied to the fields of healthy food such as early nutrition, sports nutrition and clinical nutrition, but also extended to new track products such as milk tea base milk. This breakthrough not only provides key core technical support for the transformation and upgrading of dairy deep processing to flexibility, high efficiency and diversification, but also provides an independent and controllable localisation solution for the quality and efficiency improvement of dairy deep processing.

High-efficiency active extraction technology of milk protein

Milk protein is a key substrate for infant formula milk powder, sports nutrition, special medical food and functional nutrition products for middle-aged and elderly people. However, China’s milk protein raw materials have long had the problem of high external dependence and insufficient independent supply capacity. Restricted by the core technology systems such as high activity maintenance, natural structural integrity protection and high-efficiency extraction, it has not been completely broken through, and industrial development is facing a serious “stuck neck” dilemma.

Based on independent innovation, Feihe took the lead in overcoming the problem of milk protein extraction and separation. It has independently developed three international leading technologies of milk protein chromatography ultrafiltration extraction, fresh active low-temperature separation and directional enzymatic lysis, and achieved a technological breakthrough in the direct extraction of highly active protein from raw cow’s milk. Among them, the extraction rate of lactoferrin extracted by chromatography ultrafiltration technology reaches 95%, and the whole process of low-temperature technology effectively protects the natural active structure of protein. Based on these three core technologies, the enterprise has built five large-scale production lines, covering the preparation of ten core raw materials such as lactoferrin, desalted whey and hydrolysed milk protein, and promoted the autonomy rate of infant formula milk powder raw materials from 50% to more than 90%.

In terms of product quality, the purity of lactoferrin has reached more than 97%, and the desalination rate of whey has reached more than 90%. All indicators have reached EU standards, which has strongly promoted the reduction of domestic dependence on desalted whey imports from 70% to less than 40%, which has significantly alleviated the pressure of import dependence. At present, Feihe has laid out milk protein raw material factories in the three golden milk source belts of Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Ningsia, with a total of 3,000 tons of fresh milk per day. It is committed to building a global supply base, realising the independent production and localisation substitution of milk protein core raw materials, and making China’s dairy industry safer and supply chain stable. And the autonomous controllable of high-end functional raw materials provides a solid guarantee.

Platform operation and quality safety through AI

Under the background of the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, AI technology is profoundly reshaping the production mode of the dairy industry. The dairy industry chain is long and has many links. The traditional carbon management model faces efficiency bottlenecks such as long accounting cycle, many data islands, and difficult to reduce carbon together. In the field of quality and safety, the traditional microbial detection cycle is as long as 2-3 days, and the traceability response is slow, and it is difficult to achieve prior prevention and real-time control.

Yili Group launched the first digital carbon management and operation platform for the whole industry chain in China’s dairy industry. With the whole life cycle carbon accounting, dynamic monitoring, intelligent decision-making and collaborative carbon reduction as the core, it builds a closed-loop system covering agriculture and animal husbandry, processing, logistics packaging, consumption and waste treatment, integrating “carbon footprint + water footprint” collaborative management, and also It takes into account the needs of large, medium and small dairy enterprises, and has the value of cross-industry and cross-regional promotion. Feihe has successfully built an automated rapid detection platform for pathogenic microorganisms, a “raw material-grade dairy industry chain traceability system” and a “near-infrared AI intelligent pupil full-link millisecond quality inspection equipment system”, which has pushed quality control to a new height of “second-level response, raw material traceability, millisecond detection”, and the traditional 2-3-day microbial screening Shortened to 30 seconds; relying on deep learning and million-level spectrum library, more than 10 indicators of the whole process of milk powder are monitored online at the millisecond level, and process parameters can be regulated in real time.

Relying on the digital carbon management and operation platform, the carbon accounting cycle is compressed from 2-3 months to 15-20 days, the efficiency is tripled, and the annual cost is about 5 million yuan, which truly realises the synergy of environmental, economic and social benefits. The product quality and safety control mode has changed from “post-disposal” to “pre-prevention”, which greatly reduces the risk of food safety. AI technology promotes the dairy industry from single-point optimisation to the whole industrial chain, helping enterprises achieve a balance between business value and social responsibility, and providing a standard paradigm for the sustainable development of the industry.

Autonomous and controllable dairy filling

Sterile carton filling is the core link of dairy manufacturing, but China’s high-end equipment has long relied on imports. There are problems such as high price, production line curing, long change cycle, high energy consumption, hydrogen peroxide residual risk and low degree of intelligence, and it is difficult to achieve global optimisation.

Hangzhou Zhongya Machinery Co., Ltd. has conquered the high-efficiency sterilisation technology of tunnel-type multi-warehouse online blanks. Through the sequential transmission of tunnel-type preheating gasisation warehouse, sterilisation warehouse, waste discharge warehouse and bottle blank moulding heating process, the online bottle blank low-energy and high-efficiency sterilisation process is realised, and it is equipped with PDMS cloud intelligent operation. The maintenance system realises remote diagnosis and digital management, and the energy efficiency of equipment is improved by 35%. Old modules can be recycled across industries to realise full-cycle green manufacturing. In response to the problems of production line curing, long change cycle, and difficult to meet the needs of small batches and multi-variety, Hangzhou Central Asia Machinery Co., Ltd. has broken through the flexible filling synchronous switching technology to realise 200-1250 ml full-capacity one-click switching production; Shandong Bihai Packaging Material Co., Ltd. has broken through flexible manufacturing and intelligent control. Manufacturing technology, research and development of multi-module compatible moulding system, to realise the seamless switching of brick bags, diamond bags and other packaging types within 30 seconds, and a single equipment can complete the multi-category production of the past 3 special lines.

The BFCA fully automatic high-speed flexible multi-functional sterile bottle blowing filling and capping integrated production line of Hangzhou Central Asia Machinery Co., Ltd. has been identified by the expert group organised by the Zhejiang Packaging Federation. The overall technical level is at the international advanced level. The relevant equipment has been applied to dairy enterprises such as Yili; Shandong Bihai Packaging Material Co., Ltd. The price of the product is only 1/2 to 2/3 of the same kind abroad. It has been applied to enterprises such as Mengniu and exported to more than 40 countries and regions such as India. China’s high-end dairy equipment has truly realised the coordinated improvement of production line efficiency, green manufacturing and economic benefits, providing a replicable scientific and technological paradigm for the independent controllability of dairy packaging equipment and the sustainable development of the industry.

Sterile packaging

In the field of sterile packaging, the 250-ml peak drill bag type and supporting filling equipment and capping equipment have long relied on imports, resulting in high equipment investment, high maintenance cost and poor flexibility when domestic dairy enterprises launch high-end normal temperature yoghurt, vegetable protein drinks and other products. Traditional bottle caps also have problems such as large opening torque, insufficient sealing, and high plastic usage, which makes it difficult to take into account consumer experience and environmental protection requirements.

Fanmei Packaging (Shandong) Co., Ltd. has leaped from a packaging material supplier to a “equipment + packaging material + service” integrated solution provider. It independently developed a 250ml peak drilling filling machine, breaking the international monopoly of dream cover and 250 peak drilling bag type. In response to the pain points of traditional bottle caps, the innovative cover body “Fanxiang Cap” is launched, which adopts a one-step low-torque large spiral design to reduce the opening force by 50%; it adopts a double-step small-calibre bottle mouth to solve the sealing problem and take into account the release of flavour; the “small barrel edge” base design is adopted to save plastic usage and improve the fitting stability. , the cover body works seamlessly with the filling machine and the capping machine to realise the autonomous control of the full link of “cover-material-machine”.

The high-end sterile packaging and filling solution independently developed by Fanmei Packaging (Shandong) Co., Ltd. provides dairy enterprises with a lower cost, faster response and more flexible technical path. Its plastic reduction design and green technology run through the whole life cycle of the product, practising the concept of environmental protection. This series of products has been widely used in domestic dairy leaders such as Yili and Mengniu, with a market share of more than 13% in liquid milk, and has been successfully sold to France, Germany and other countries. China’s high-end dairy equipment has truly realised the coordinated improvement of cost control, flexible response and green manufacturing, providing a replicable successful paradigm for the industry’s independent, efficient and green high-end packaging overall solution.

Functional sugar manufacturing

In order to realise the scientific sugar reduction of processed food, Action for Healthy China (2019-2030) advocates that food enterprises use functional sugar to replace sucrose. The new generation of functional sugar represented by tag sugar plays an important role in the food industry and health management with its pure taste close to sucrose, extremely low calories, regulating intestinal health, low glycetic index and other physiological functions. However, although the sugar was approved as a new food raw material in 2014, it has been monopolised by a few countries for a long time because of its high-efficiency biotransformation and separation and purification technology and key enzyme preparations, and the cost is high, which seriously restricts its wide application.

China’s scientific research units and enterprises have worked together to overcome the problems of enzyme preparation, biotransformation and high-purity crystalisation, and achieved a breakthrough of lactose and starch dual routes: the lactose route has built China’s first fully automated production line through enzyme-oriented evolution and double enzyme co-expression; starch route uses multi-enzyme molecular machine technology, and the conversion rate exceeds 6 0%, the pilot has been completed, the product purity has reached more than 99%, and an independent intellectual property production system has been built, and the cost has been reduced by about 60%. Tag sugar can significantly improve the sweetness quality and texture stability of yoghurt, give milk drinks a refreshing and smooth taste, and provide a healthy low-sugar label for formula milk powder. More importantly, its functional attributes such as regulating blood sugar and helping intestinal health have greatly broadened the development boundaries of functional dairy products.

This breakthrough marks that China has broken down international technical barriers in the field of new functional sugars, realised the localisation of the whole chain from core enzyme preparations to industrial mass production, and provided a new low-sugar option for yoghurt, milk drinks and high-end formula milk powder. From a cup of yoghurt to a can of high-end milk powder, the domestic application of Tag sugar is a strong witness that China’s dairy industry relies on independent innovation, masters core technologies, and leads the healthy upgrading of global dairy products.

Green low-carbon technology

From the “dual carbon” goal to the “15th Five-Year Plan” planning proposal, the construction of an agricultural industry system with green and low-carbon circular development is emphasised. However, the long industrial chain of the dairy industry, the dispersion of carbon emissions, the low coverage rate of the three-scope accounting, the poor connection of the breeding cycle, and the lack of carbon management standards, etc., restrict the green transformation of the industry.

In response to accounting and standard issues, Yili has launched a carbon management and operation platform, which has built a closed-loop system covering upstream agriculture and animal husbandry, production and processing, logistics and packaging, consumption and waste treatment, integrating the collaborative management of “carbon footprint + water footprint”, to achieve 100% full coverage of factories across the country, and strongly support the accurate amount of carbon emissions in the supply chain. Chemical. In response to the problem of poor connection of the breeding cycle, Mengniu has built a whole-chain green low-carbon technology system, forming a cycle model of “fort planting – dairy farming – cow dung biogas power generation – swamp fertiliser return to the field”, and cooperated with the resource utilisation of 100% manure of pasture; built 41 national green factories, 4 zero-carbon factories, and launched Tren Su Desert organic pure milk and other green products; practising the 4R1D green packaging strategy, PHA marine degradable straws are applied for the first time in China.

There are 154 members of the Yili Zero Carbon Alliance, and the carbon emission intensity per ton of products in 2025 will be 65% lower than that of the 2012 benchmark year. Mengniu has been selected as the Enterprise Carbon Neutrality Path Map of the United Nations Global Compact for its desert organic pasture practice. It has won the highest AA rating in the MSCI ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) industry for three consecutive years, and has been selected as the S&P Global Sustainable Development Yearbook for two consecutive years. The whole-chain green low-carbon technology system provides a system solution that can be popularised for the green and low-carbon transformation of the dairy industry.

Look ahead

Looking forward to 2026 and beyond, in order to accelerate the development of new quality productivity in the dairy industry and promote industrial upgrading, it still needs government guidance, enterprise-led, scientific and technological support, market-driven and other multi-party cooperation to strengthen top-level design, increase R&D investment and collaborative innovation, build an integrated innovation ecology, and promote scientific and technological innovation and industrial development. Show in-depth integration, improve national health, and realise the transformation from a “dairy powerhouse” to a “dairty powerhouse”. It is expected that dairy industry colleagues will continue to adhere to the concept of scientific and technological innovation to lead the industry development, increase scientific and technological investment, focus on the direction of “efficient production, precise nutrition, green low-carbon, intelligent manufacturing”, and form a technological breakthrough of the whole industrial chain: tackle active protection and flavour regulation at the raw material end, and improve the nutritional quality of products; push the processing end Dynamic and precise sterilisation and nutrition customisation, and develop functional products for different groups of people; the deep processing end breaks through the high-value extraction technology, realises the full-component utilisation of raw milk, and reduces import dependence; the manufacturing end improves the localisation rate of intelligence and equipment, and integrates AI and digital twins; at the same time, it tackles low-carbon breeding and environmental protection packaging, and helps the “dual carbon “The goal. Synthetic biology is accelerating its industrialisation, which is expected to bring about subversive changes in breast milk oligosaccharides, lactoferrin and other fields. Driven by policy and science and technology, China’s dairy industry is moving towards a higher quality, safer and more sustainable future.

(Adapted from the China Food Newspaper)