China: Tsingtao Brewery focusing on portfolio optimization and channel expansion

In 2025, China's beer industry entered a period of profound development characterized by simultaneous quality enhancement, efficiency improvement, and structural upgrading. Data showed that from January to November 2025, the cumulative production of domestic large-scale beer enterprises remained basically flat compared with the same period last year, indicating that industry competition has shifted from scale expansion to value-driven deep cultivation, Futubull reported on December 31.

Qingdao Beer, building on its century-old brand heritage and forward-looking innovation, stabilized its position on the value high ground with steady volume and improved quality as the year drew to a close. Moreover, adopting a 'finishing strong and sprinting ahead' posture, it secured a first-mover advantage for industry competition in 2026.

In the first three quarters of 2025, Qingdao Beer’s main brand achieved product sales of 3.99 million kiloliters, representing a year-on-year increase of 4.1%. Sales of mid-to-high-end products reached 2.935 million kiloliters, growing by 5.6% year-on-year, with their proportion steadily rising. This became the core driver of performance growth, showcasing the company's competitiveness in the mid-to-high-end market.

Currently, expanding domestic demand and boosting consumption have become key drivers of economic growth. Under a series of policy initiatives, the domestic consumer market continued to recover. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, China's GDP grew by 5.2% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025, with final consumption expenditure contributing 53.5% to economic growth—an increase of 9.0 percentage points over the previous year—becoming the main engine of economic growth.

Leveraging its brand and quality advantages, Qingdao Beer continuously consolidated its market share and led the industry in value upgrading. Through multi-dimensional efforts, the company focused on 'new demographics, new demands, new products, new channels, and new scenarios.' On one hand, it built a diversified product portfolio to align innovative products with consumer trends. On the other hand, it capitalized on the instant retail trend to expand emerging channels, using fresh draft preservation and direct delivery to broaden growth opportunities. In recent years, its instant retail business transaction volume has achieved continuous rapid growth.

Based on the characteristics of stable total volume and structural upgrading in the beer industry, Qingdao Beer resolutely advanced its high-quality development strategy. With its brand as the guiding force, it strengthened and optimized its core beer business, using the 'five new' elements as key strategies to precisely meet the diverse needs of the consumer market. Through synergistic efforts in product innovation, channel transformation, and brand cultivation, it built comprehensive competitive advantages.

In terms of product portfolio, the company steadfastly implemented the '1+1+1+2+N' product combination development strategy for its main brand, Qingdao Beer. While strengthening core categories such as Classic, Pure Draft, and White Beer, it continuously enriched its premium fresh and innovative product matrix. Through full price range coverage and differentiated offerings, it achieved continuous optimization of its product structure. To address consumers' demands for quality, personalization, and health, Qingdao Beer developed a differentiated product matrix comprising nine major series and over 100 product categories, meeting the diverse needs of different consumption scenarios and demographics. Its products have repeatedly won authoritative gold awards in domestic and international competitions.

The channel strategy closely followed the evolving trends of consumption scenarios. While reinforcing mainstream channels, Qingdao Beer continuously broke new ground, achieving synergy between traditional and emerging channels.

In online network channels, Tsingtao Brewery continues to deepen its operations on traditional platforms, leading across all major online platforms. During the 2025 Singles' Day shopping event, Tsingtao Brewery ranked first in both brand and store sales in the beer category on JD.com, and took the top spot in four core rankings on Tmall: member engagement, new customer acquisition, transaction volume, and repurchase. In the beer category rankings for Douyin, PDD Holdings, VIP.com, and Suning, Tsingtao Brewery consistently ranked first.

In the emerging channel of instant retail, Tsingtao Brewery has seized the initiative by strengthening the development of new business models such as lightning warehouses and specialized liquor stores, activating the premium fresh beer market through direct delivery of fresh products. By leveraging preservation technology and a digital supply chain, products with shorter shelf lives, such as premium unfiltered beer, are reaching broader consumption scenarios, fully adapting to the current trend of immediate consumption and successfully tapping into incremental markets.

In offline innovative channels, Tsingtao Brewery has collaborated with the Chinese Super League, Scottish Premiership, Asian Games, Australian Open, CBA, and the Huabiao Awards of Chinese cinema to create cross-sectoral experiences like 'watching sports + drinking freely' and 'watching movies + wine tasting,' achieving deep integration of beer consumption with sports, culture, and tourism. Internationally, its products are sold in over 120 countries and regions. From Russian pilots packing Tsingtao Beer after the Zhuhai Airshow to Korean tourists returning home with chilled Tsingtao draft beer, the brand's presence at events like the Chain Expo, CIIE, the Multinational Corporations Leaders Summit in Qingdao, and international flights highlights its premium image as a symbol of 'Made in China.'

As industry concentration in the beer sector continues to rise, brand strength has become the core competitiveness of leading brands. Tsingtao Brewery adheres to quality-based branding, innovation-driven branding, openness-enhanced branding, and culture-infused branding, achieving a brand value of 280.355 billion yuan, ranking among the top 500 global brands and securing the top position in China’s beer industry. It has been recognized as the global champion in Brand Finance’s beer industry brand strength rankings and included in the MIIT’s first batch of 'China Consumer Brands.' Through diverse marketing initiatives, the company reinforces its century-old brand heritage while appealing to younger consumers with trendy designs and domestically-produced fashion items, ensuring long-term growth potential.

Tsingtao Brewery regards technological innovation as its engine for development. By optimizing production capacity and advancing digitalization, intelligence, and green transformation, it converts technical advantages into developmental momentum while actively fulfilling social responsibilities to achieve high-quality growth aligned with societal values.

Hardcore technology provides a solid foundation for Tsingtao Brewery’s innovative product development. Relying on national-level research platforms, Tsingtao Brewery continues to make breakthroughs in key areas such as strain selection and flavor control, winning the National Science and Technology Progress Award four times and becoming the only enterprise in the industry to receive this honor. Its unique 'Charm Perception Quality Management Model Based on Digital End-to-End Decoding' ensures full traceability across more than 1,800 critical quality monitoring points, guaranteeing stable quality, supporting product innovation, and creating different drinking scenarios for consumers. This showcases the intelligent, green, and integrated transformation path of traditional manufacturing.

Biotechnology layout represents a significant breakthrough for Tsingtao Brewery in upgrading industrial quality. In November 2025, the production base project of Tsingtao Brewery Biotechnology Co., Ltd. officially commenced construction within Tsingtao Brewery’s Smart Industrial Park. Leveraging Tsingtao Brewery’s R&D advantages in biofermentation, the project utilizes globally leading targeted enzymatic hydrolysis technology to add high-value utilization to beer production by-products. Integrating green, healthy, and functional attributes, it expands from food and beverage sectors into functional foods and biomedicine, opening up new growth spaces for the company.

Through the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial practice, Tsingtao Brewery transforms technical advantages into highly efficient productivity. Currently, the company has optimized its production capacity across 20 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China, establishing a production network consisting of 57 wholly-owned and controlled beer production enterprises and two joint ventures and cooperative beer production enterprises.

The parallel progress of digital transformation and green development has injected lasting momentum into the beer industry’s upgrade. The world’s first 'Sustainable Lighthouse Factory' in the food and beverage sector continues to demonstrate effectiveness, not only improving production efficiency but also optimizing capacity utilization, achieving simultaneous growth in scale and benefits. To date, the company has established 23 national-level green factories, the most in the industry, setting benchmarks in low-carbon brewing, energy conservation, and emission reduction, thereby reinforcing its green foundation for sustainable development.

As the only enterprise in the industry and among local state-owned enterprises in Shandong Province to be included in the 'State-Owned Enterprises Social Responsibility Blue Paper (2025),' Qingdao Brewery has deeply integrated social responsibility into its development strategy. The company has released sustainability reports for seventeen consecutive years and formed employee volunteer teams to engage in public welfare. By promoting green production through technological innovation, facilitating economic transformation through industrial expansion, and giving back to society via philanthropic initiatives, Qingdao Brewery has achieved coordinated growth in both economic and social benefits, contributing to high-quality transformation within the industry.

In a market environment where value investing principles are increasingly emphasized, Qingdao Brewery's operating fundamentals remain solid and stable, with profitability continuously improving and core competitive advantages being further strengthened. Its investment value is expected to be further recognized by the market. Based on this, the company places great importance on shareholder returns, forming a positive feedback loop through consistent and stable profit distribution.

Since its listing in 1993, Qingdao Brewery has maintained cash dividends for 26 consecutive years, accumulating 29 years of dividend payouts, with a total amount reaching 18.6 billion yuan (pre-tax), far exceeding the net financing amount of 5.1 billion yuan from capital markets after its listing. In 2024, the company distributed a cash dividend of 2.20 yuan per share (including tax), representing a 10% increase compared to 2023. The total dividend payout reached 3 billion yuan, with a payout ratio as high as 69%, setting a new historical record.

The continuous and stable dividend payments reflect Qingdao Brewery's solid operational foundation, demonstrating the company's sound financial condition and strong profitability. It also provides investors with predictable returns, establishing itself as a quality representative in the market that combines growth potential with stability.

Looking ahead to 2026, Qingdao Brewery will continue to focus on its core strategy, optimize its product supply structure, actively explore emerging channels, and drive efficiency improvements across the entire industrial chain through digital and intelligent transformation. Amidst the wave of industry value enhancement, the company will leverage its multiple advantages in branding, technology, channels, and capital to further consolidate its leading position in the industry and continuously enhance its brand value and market capitalization levels.

With 122 years of brand heritage and continuously evolving innovative capabilities, Qingdao Brewery continues to strengthen its position as an industry leader, striving toward higher development goals. Moving forward, the company will remain committed to high-quality development, creating long-term and stable investment returns for shareholders, contributing more momentum to industry development, and writing a new chapter for this century-old brand.