South Korea's sterilized milk imports increased nearly 9 times! Sterilized milk is popular in South Korea

As people's health awareness improves, more and more people begin to pay attention to diet and nutritional balance, and milk has become a necessity in people's daily life, and Korean families are no exception.

Milk can be roughly divided into two types according to the different ways it is sterilized : pasteurized milk, which has a shorter shelf life and needs to be refrigerated ; and sterilized milk, which has a longer shelf life and can be stored at room temperature. Koreans have always tended to buy pasteurized milk, which is fresher, and its market share has always exceeded 90%.

However, it is understood that the popularity of sterilized milk in South Korea seems to have surpassed the long-loved pasteurized milk . According to CCTV Finance, major milk companies in South Korea have recently increased their prices by 4% to 5%, and the imported sterilized milk on the market is about RMB 9 per liter, which is about 40% cheaper than the pasteurized milk commonly drunk by Koreans.

Moreover, sterilized milk, which can be stored for a long time, has almost no difference in taste and nutrition compared with pasteurized milk. Therefore, since the price increase of major milk companies in South Korea, the sales volume of sterilized milk in South Korea has increased significantly. Not only in the physical market in South Korea, but also on major online shopping platforms, "sterilized milk" has always been at the top of major search lists and is deeply favored by consumers.

Sterilized milk has a relatively long storage time, and most of South Korea's sterilized milk comes from Europe and other places. The cows in these regions are raised on pastures, which has lower production costs than South Korea's cows are raised in barns.

Therefore , driven by price advantages, the market share of imported sterilized milk in South Korea has increased from 10% to 25% over the past five years , and the import volume has increased nearly nine times, especially in the first eight months of this year, the import volume has exceeded the whole of last year.

Today, the scale of the sterilized milk market in South Korea is still expanding. For South Korean milk companies , there is not much difference in the cost of producing pasteurized milk and sterilized milk, but the packaging cost of sterilized milk is 1.5 times higher .

It is reported that South Korea will cancel the import tariffs on dairy products in 2026, and it will be more difficult to ensure the competitiveness of domestic milk at that time. Relevant sellers can pay more attention to the sales trend of milk in the Korean market in order to better develop the market for Korean sterilized milk.

Changes in sales of milk types in South Korea