NFC Juice 'Blending Scandal' Escalates: How Can New Consumer Brands Avoid the Trap of Conceptual Marketing?

A controversy surrounding NFC juice has brought a long-standing issue in the food and beverage industry back to the forefront: as terms like "NFC," "freshly squeezed," and "zero additives" increasingly command price premiums, are consumers paying for the product itself, or for the concepts on the packaging?

In mid-July, media investigations exposed that certain contract juice manufacturers in Henan had irregular labeling practices for NFC juice, with some products questioned for discrepancies between their actual production methods and marketing claims like "fresh fruit cold-pressed" or "100% pure NFC juice." Local regulatory authorities have intervened to investigate, and some involved companies have suspended production for rectification. Currently, the final conclusions of the regulatory investigation should be awaited. From an industry perspective, a more important discussion than whether a single company violated regulations is: why are concepts like NFC, freshly squeezed, and zero additives becoming increasingly frequent sources of public relations risk in the food and beverage industry?

Why are concepts like NFC, freshly squeezed, and zero additives becoming increasingly frequent sources of public relations risk in the food and beverage industry?

The answer may not be that consumers no longer need "healthy drinks"; on the contrary, as health demands grow stronger, consumers are beginning to require brands to provide more sufficient evidence for their "health premiums."

I. Demand is still growing, trust is becoming expensive

Looking at consumption data, the Chinese beverage market has not entered a cycle of shrinking demand.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in the first half of 2026, retail sales of beverages by units above designated size reached 160.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.0%, significantly higher than the 1.3% growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods in the same period; during the same period, online retail sales of "food" products grew by 16.8%.

NielsenIQ's monitoring of the 2025 beverage market also shows that niche segments such as 100% juice, electrolyte water, and sugar-free tea have maintained double-digit growth.

(Source: National Bureau of Statistics, NielsenIQ, compiled by Insight Research Report)

In the past, beverage brands competed over "what consumers drink"; now, more and more niche segments are competing over why consumers are willing to pay a few extra yuan.

100% juice corresponds to natural, sugar-free tea to sugar control, electrolyte water to sports replenishment, and Chinese-style health water to wellness needs.

When functional and health attributes become the source of premiums, brands are selling not just liquid, but a set of promises regarding raw materials, craftsmanship, and health value.

This also determines that once there is a gap between the promise and the actual product, the risk will be greater than for ordinary beverages.

II. The juice market is polarizing

An important industry background for the NFC juice controversy is not that the overall juice market is growing rapidly, but that traditional juice and health-oriented juice are moving along completely different growth trajectories.

Offline retail monitoring data for the second quarter of 2026 released by Mashangying shows that ready-to-drink juice sales fell by 14.84% year-on-year, making it one of the segments with the largest declines among major beverage categories; during the same period, carbonated drinks fell by 12.23%, sugary ready-to-drink tea fell by 11.17%, while sugar-free ready-to-drink tea maintained a 16.10% year-on-year growth.

More noteworthy is the product supply side.

In the second quarter of 2026, 679 new ready-to-drink juice products were launched, maintaining a high number of new products in the beverage category, but this is a decrease of 503 compared to the 1,182 in the same period of 2025. After market demand came under pressure, companies have significantly reduced the pace of expansion relying on large-scale SKU trial and error.

(Source: Mashangying "2026 Q2 Offline Retail Express", compiled by Insight Research Report)

But if we look further at leading companies, the juice market presents another picture.

Nongfu Spring's juice beverage business achieved revenue of 5.176 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 26.7%, with a growth rate significantly higher than the current overall performance of the juice category. The company's juice products have formed product series such as NFC juice and 17.5° juice, and continue to expand into channels such as membership supermarkets.

In the second half of 2025, Nongfu Spring's juice beverage revenue was approximately 2.612 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.5%, with both the 17.5° and NFC series achieving good market performance.

(Source: Mashangying, Nongfu Spring 2025 Annual Performance, Everbright Securities, compiled by Insight Research Report)

This set of seemingly contradictory data actually better explains what is happening in the current juice industry.

Consumers are not simply "not drinking juice anymore," but are reducing consumption of traditional high-sugar, low-concentration, and undifferentiated juice beverages, while shifting some demand to 100% juice, NFC, additive-free, and products that emphasize real ingredients.

In other words, the juice industry is moving from the past "category growth" into a more obvious "structural elimination."

The era when traditional juice could achieve growth by relying on taste, packaging, and channel coverage is passing; the basis for products like NFC and 100% juice to obtain premiums comes from consumers' renewed emphasis on ingredient authenticity, juice content, and processing methods.

But it is precisely under this structural change that the commercial value of the three letters "NFC" has been rapidly magnified.

When consumers are willing to pay higher prices for "NFC," "freshly squeezed," and "100% juice," brands gain the motivation to reinforce these concepts; and when the actual product cost and supply chain capabilities cannot support this premium, the incentive for companies to further use packaging, product titles, and marketing rhetoric to blur product boundaries also increases.

Therefore, this round of NFC public opinion did not occur in a rapidly rising market.

On the contrary, it occurred at a stage where the juice industry is under overall pressure and healthy niche categories are competing for incremental growth.

The scarcer the incremental growth, the higher the commercial value of labels like "healthy," "natural," and "NFC," and the easier it is for contradictions arising around the authenticity of these labels to erupt.

III. Why are there more and more concepts?

One of the biggest changes in the beverage industry over the past few years is that SKUs are rapidly differentiating.

NielsenIQ data shows that core beverage products still contribute more than 60% of market business, but the sales share of non-hit long-tail products has increased from 28% to 37%. The more products there are, the more brands need to tell consumers within a few seconds "why they should buy this bottle."

As a result, marketing competition has gradually shifted from brand names to label competition:

NFC, HPP, 0 sucrose, 0 additives, fresh extraction, original leaf, natural, plant-based, low GI...

The common feature of these words is that they can quickly convert complex production processes into a simple reason for consumption.

But problems have also arisen from this.

CNR News investigation in May this year found that although some products on the market highlight "NFC" in prominent positions on the packaging, the actual NFC juice content may be very low, with some products having an NFC grape juice content of only 0.005%. Currently, there is no unified special threshold for the minimum addition ratio in the expression "added NFC juice." A typical food marketing structure has emerged:

Large print is responsible for building awareness, while small print is responsible for meeting compliance.

It does not necessarily mean that the product itself is unqualified, but it will continuously expand the information gap between consumer understanding and the actual attributes of the product.

The biggest particularity of the food industry is that consumers usually cannot verify the raw materials and production process before purchasing.

Whether a bottle of juice is freshly squeezed or a bag of snacks is truly "0 additives," it is difficult for consumers to verify on the spot.

Food brands are essentially selling a trust-based commodity.

The more concepts there are, the higher the short-term marketing efficiency companies obtain; the larger the information gap, the higher the long-term trust cost brands bear.

IV. Regulation is squeezing the fuzzy space

An important reason why this marketing model can exist for a long time is that packaging expressions are very complex.

But the regulatory direction has become increasingly clear: food labels should not only pursue "written in form," but also consider "what consumers actually see."

Existing GB 7718-related rules already require that if a food label specifically emphasizes the inclusion of certain valuable or characteristic ingredients or components, their addition amount or content in the finished product should be indicated. The new version of GB 7718-2025 released in 2025 further clarifies that ingredients or components specifically emphasized on the label should be quantitatively indicated. What companies are concerned about is that the "Administrative Measures for Food Labeling Supervision" will be implemented on March 16, 2027.

The new regulations clearly require food labels to be "clear, obvious, and easy for consumers to identify and read," and food production and business operators must be responsible for the authenticity, accuracy, and legality of food labels; food names should reflect the true attributes of the food and must not deceive or mislead consumers. The main food label information published on online sales pages should also be consistent with the actual product. The "Administrative Measures for Food Labeling Supervision" of the State Administration for Market Regulation is changing the marketing logic of food companies:

In the past, the research was about "can this word be written";

In the future, a more important question might be "after consumers see this word, will they form an understanding that is inconsistent with the true attributes of the product?"

The compliance boundary is extending from text review to overall consumer perception.

V. The next round of competition is 'evidence assets'

The "National Health '15th Five-Year' Plan" issued on July 13 proposes to accelerate the popularization of healthy lifestyles by 2030, with the average life expectancy reaching 80 years. Health consumption remains one of the directions with relatively high long-term certainty in the food and beverage industry. After consumption enters the next stage, "natural," "healthy," and "fresh" themselves are no longer enough.

What brands really need to build is a verifiable evidence system.

For NFC juice, competition will ultimately come down to fruit sources, procurement cycles, processing technology, production enterprises, cold chain systems, and testing capabilities; for other foods, it corresponds to ingredient authenticity, nutritional indicators, production standards, and supply chain transparency.

This also means that the "brand is responsible for marketing, factory is responsible for production" model common in the past will become increasingly difficult to separate.

Consumers buy brands, and public opinion will ultimately return to the brand.

What is more worth investing in for food companies in the future is not just a new packaging concept, but ensuring that there is a verifiable chain of evidence behind every marketing concept.

Conclusion

The NFC juice controversy looks on the surface like a discussion about "freshly squeezed vs. reconstituted," but behind it reflects a deeper change in the competitive logic of China's food and beverage industry.

When the growth rate of beverage consumption rebounds and healthy categories like 100% juice continue to grow, health remains a market opportunity.

But "health" is changing from a marketing word into a product attribute that consumers need to verify.

In the past, new consumer brands relied on creating concepts to establish differentiation; in the next stage, what can truly form a brand barrier may be precisely explaining complex supply chain, process, and ingredient information.

The food industry has not entered an era where "concepts cannot be talked about," but is entering an era where "concepts must have evidence."

When consumers start flipping to the back of the packaging to look at the ingredient list, industry competition has actually moved from marketing ability to authenticity ability.