Huangjiu cannot save the major Baijiu distributors

A flying leaf drifts past, disturbing the waters of two ponds.

The long-quiet alcohol market has ushered in a new story. Since last year, leading Baijiu distributors have started to cooperate with Huangjiu brands, taking charge of regional markets or even co-developing new brands. This cross-border cooperation has seen a small boom in recent months, and even directly triggered the daily limit rise of Huangjiu-related stocks recently.

The reason is self-evident: the Baijiu market has shrunk sharply, with poor sales performance, declining profits and occupied capital, forcing Baijiu distributors to seek other paths; the more long-term challenge is that de-distribution in the Baijiu market is becoming an established trend, and traditional distributors that refuse to transform will be eliminated sooner or later.

However, can Huangjiu become a lifeline for them amid anxiety? Although Huangjiu has a long history, it has long-standing industry problems such as small market scale, obvious regional characteristics, aging products, strong outdated brand impressions and single sales channels that have not been solved to this day.

Even if leading Huangjiu players have achieved growth and improved profitability through high-end and youth-oriented strategies in recent years, this market with a total scale of only 20 billion yuan is obviously unable to support the transformation expectations of large distributors retreating from the 600-billion-yuan Baijiu market.

Do all leading Baijiu distributors want to sell Huangjiu?

As Baijiu becomes harder to sell, many leading Baijiu distributors have set their sights on the Huangjiu track.

In May 2025, Shandong Hongfeng Trading, a Moutai distributor, reached a 100-million-yuan level strategic cooperation with Kuaijishan Lanting. This was almost the prelude to leading Baijiu distributors embracing Huangjiu in recent years.

At that time, the market did not pay much attention to this move. Until a year later, Huangjiu giants launched a nationwide scramble for leading Baijiu distributors.

In April 2026, Henan Maowujian, a top high-end alcohol distributor in the Central Plains region, took a further step and established the joint venture subsidiary "Kuaijishan · Yuannian" with Kuaijishan. Henan Maowujian is responsible for the national expansion of the Yuannian sub-brand and operates the Lanting brand's Henan market at the same time.

After that, Kuaijishan successively signed contracts with leading Baijiu distributors in Northeast China, Sichuan, Beijing, Nanjing and other regions, focusing on promoting the national popularization of its high-end brand Lanting. As of September 2026, more than 10 leading national Baijiu distributors have signed contracts in total.

Guyue Longshan is not to be outdone. It first entered Beijing and reached a strategic cooperation with Beijing Sugar & Tobacco Group, directly competing with Kuaijishan for the Beijing Huangjiu market; a few months later, it jointly developed the Amber Light product with Guangdong Yueqiang Alcohol and Chongqing Agricultural Means of Production in the southern market.

In recent years, a large number of Baijiu distributors have withdrawn from the Baijiu market. Financial reports show that from 2024 to the first half of 2026, the number of distributors of 20 listed Baijiu enterprises decreased by more than 6,000. If the reduction of distributors of unlisted Baijiu enterprises is included, the total number of the industry will be a very staggering figure.

These large distributors who have been deeply involved in the Baijiu market for many years usually do not withdraw from the alcohol market directly, but switch tracks to fields such as beer, Huangjiu, red wine, foreign liquor, or enter new tracks such as domestic whisky.

One of the most well-known stories is that Wang Xiaozhuo, a leading Baijiu distributor, founded Sibohe, one of the most high-end beer brands in China, in Northeast China. Most of Sibohe's distributors in various provinces are also Baijiu distributors in Wang Xiaozhuo's social circle.

Previous industry news also showed that Laizhou Whisky under Bairun Co., Ltd. takes Baijiu distributors as one of its key expansion directions, and a large number of Baijiu distributors have been invited to visit the Laizhou Distillery since last year.

Cross-border operation of distributors is not uncommon in the food, beverage and alcohol markets. The reason why leading Baijiu distributors' layout of Huangjiu in the past year or more has attracted widespread attention is mainly that Baijiu distributors actually take the small-scale Huangjiu business seriously. Why is this happening?

Does Baijiu no longer need traditional distributors?

From January to June 2026, the cumulative output of Baijiu of enterprises above designated size nationwide was 1.679 million kiloliters, down 4.7% year on year; the total operating revenue of 20 A+H share listed Baijiu enterprises in the first half of the year was 200.44 billion yuan, down 6.7% year on year.

The *2026 Mid-term Research Report on China's Baijiu Market* released by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association in June shows that the Baijiu industry as a whole still faces the triple pressure of shrinking sales volume, sales revenue and profit margin in the first half of the year.

According to surveys, nearly three-quarters of offline terminal stores have seen a decline in turnover and customer unit price, and more than 86% have experienced profit shrinkage; the number of terminal stores has shrunk by nearly 62%.

Despite the shrinking market, the top-down consignment-based distribution model in the Baijiu industry has not been fundamentally reversed. Brands have shifted the pressure of inventory stocking and clearance to channels, putting huge pressure on distributors.

In this round of industry adjustment, which is more drastic than the 2013-2015 period, the Baijiu market is shrinking, less profitable and occupying a large amount of capital, forcing Baijiu distributors to consider their way out.

Facing market pressure, leading brands that hold the dominant position in the Baijiu market have successively promoted direct sales strategies, and traditional distribution seems to have become a tasteless channel that is a waste to keep but a pity to discard.

Taking Kweichow Moutai as an example, its brand value's driving power and smooth channels such as i Moutai made the direct sales channel revenue account for more than 57% of the company's total revenue in the first half of 2026.

As the price of Feitian Moutai stabilizes and Kweichow Moutai restarts its price adjustment strategy, the profit margin of Moutai distributors is generally shrinking.

Even if other large Baijiu brands do not set direct sales as their expected goal, most of them are actively promoting the BC integrated channel construction. In the past, they paid more attention to the quantity and quality of distributors, but now they pay more attention to the coverage rate of terminal stores.

Distributors have changed from the core force of buy-out sales to service providers for the vast number of Baijiu terminals. This puts higher requirements on distributors: they need not only terminal control ability, high-end circle reach ability, but also regional market implementation and service ability.

Under this new situation, the living space of traditional Baijiu distributors has been further squeezed. Even if they are not forced to exit, many Baijiu distributors will choose to leave voluntarily, trying to enter other markets with more living space.

Then, can Huangjiu really become the lifeline for leading Baijiu distributors?

Can Baijiu distributors sell Huangjiu well?

Although Baijiu and beer occupy most of the drinking scenarios for Chinese people at present, Huangjiu is the oldest alcohol in China with a history of 2500 years, and is known as one of the three major fermented wines in the world.

Almost every leading Huangjiu company that has developed to this day has profound industry accumulation. Kuaijishan owns four major brands including Kuaijishan, Lanting, Xitang and Wuzhanmao, as well as three production bases; Guyue Longshan has five major brands including Guyue Longshan, Jianhu, Nverhong, Zhuangyuanhong and Shenyonghe, among which there are two "China Well-Known Trademarks" and four "China Time-Honored Brands".

However, the Huangjiu market generally has problems such as small scale, regional characteristics, aging brands, traditional products and single channels, which have long been difficult to solve.

In 2025, the Huangjiu market is estimated to have a scale of about 20 billion yuan, and the consumer market is concentrated in a few regions such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Guangdong and Fujian. In the perception of quite a number of people, Huangjiu is even regarded as a cooking seasoning.

From the perspective of industry data, the growth in the past five years and the expected growth in the next five years of Huangjiu are even lower than that of Baijiu and beer.

In recent years, Kuaijishan and Guyue Longshan have actively promoted high-end and youth-oriented strategies. As representatives of high-end Huangjiu, Lanting and Guoniang have begun to stand out in business scenarios. The two Huangjiu giants' cooperation with leading Baijiu distributors this time focuses on promoting these two product lines; in the youth-oriented direction, Kuaijishan has launched sparkling Huangjiu, while Guyue Longshan has launched products such as non-alcoholic Huangjiu and Huangjiu fruit wine.

With the efforts of the two giants, the Huangjiu market has indeed achieved rare growth and profitability improvement amid the downturn of the alcohol market through product high-end and youth-oriented strategies, brand image upgrading and the development of online channels.

Among them, Kuaijishan, relying on the Lanting brand, surpassed Guyue Longshan to become the new top player in the Huangjiu market, which is one of the biggest highlights of the Huangjiu market in recent years.

However, after all, this is still squeezed growth and structural prosperity. Under the two giants, the shrinking business of Jinfeng Wine under Bright Group in recent years has revealed the cruel reality of the Huangjiu industry.

Moreover, Huangjiu has stronger consumer attributes. Except for a few high-end core products such as Lanting and Guoniang, the price range of most products is at the level of daily drinking wine; it is deeply bound to the catering channel, which is similar to the on-premise consumption channel of the beer market. These key characteristics make Huangjiu completely different from the Baijiu market, and the reuse rate of channels and experience is very low.

Therefore, leading Baijiu distributors rushing to the Huangjiu market may be a futile act of seeking help in a hurry.

In general, the Huangjiu market is small and highly regional. Its products, brands and channels still need a long-term layout to reverse the current situation, and cannot bear the unrealistic expectations of the entire alcohol market.

For traditional Baijiu distributors, if they cannot cultivate new capabilities in the new alcohol market, the result will be the same no matter which market they enter.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Zebra Consumption" (ID: banmaxiaofei), the author is Yang Wei, and it is released by 36Kr with authorization.