A former Yili executive and a new dairy in Hohhot.

Mengniu was founded in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, on 18 August 1999, Chinese Wikipedia says. Its name means “Mongolian cow.” Its founder, Niu Gensheng, had been a vice-president of Yili, the older Hohhot dairy that is now Mengniu’s main rival; Chinese Wikipedia says he left Yili in 1998. English Wikipedia names Sun Xianhong, who served as vice-president of marketing, as a co-founder. The company’s first production plant was finished in December 1999, and Mengniu’s own timeline says that in its first year it ranked 119th among China’s dairies by sales.

The climb that followed was fast. Chinese Wikipedia says that by 2001 Mengniu had risen to fifth place in the industry. In 2002, English Wikipedia says, the investors Morgan Stanley, CDH Investments and China Capital Partners agreed to take a combined 32% stake, and on 10 June 2004 the company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange as China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited. It remains listed there and, the company says, is a constituent of the Hang Seng Index.

The operating company is still Inner Mongolia Mengniu Dairy, with its headquarters in Hohhot. Mengniu says it runs 45 production bases in China and that its products reach more than ten countries and regions in Southeast Asia, Oceania and North America. Its brand family, as listed by the company, includes the premium milk Telunsu, the yoghurt Just Yoghurt (Chunzhen), the youth drink Suan Suan Ru, the fresh-milk line Daily Fresh and, through acquisitions, the Australian infant-food brand Bellamy’s and the cheese maker Milkground. Among the company’s senior managers, president Gao Fei joined in 1999, the founding year, and took the top executive role in 2024, according to the company.

Astronaut milk, Super Girl and a premium carton.

Mengniu made its name with big marketing moves. Its timeline says that in April 2003 its milk was chosen as the designated milk for China’s astronauts and accompanied the Shenzhou 5 flight, China’s first crewed spaceflight; English Wikipedia notes the “milk for China’s astronauts” campaigns that followed, and the company still calls itself a strategic partner of the Chinese space programme. In 2005 its youth yoghurt drink Suan Suan Ru sponsored the television talent show Super Girl, and the contestant Zhang Hanyun became the face of its advertising, English Wikipedia says. A slogan, roughly “China’s cow, the world’s cow, Mengniu,” played on the double meaning of niu as both “cow” and “outstanding.”

The same year brought Telunsu, which Mengniu describes as China’s first premium milk. The company says the name means “gold-medal milk” in Mongolian, and Telunsu marked its twentieth anniversary in August 2025. In June 2025 the shipping case of its desert-organic Telunsu won an excellence award for design at China’s 25th Patent Awards, the company says.

Sport carried the brand abroad. Mengniu says it was announced on 20 December 2016 as an official sponsor of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the first dairy brand to be a global World Cup sponsor; English Wikipedia lists its sponsorship of the 2018, 2022 and 2026 tournaments. The footballer Lionel Messi became a brand ambassador in February 2018 and Kylian Mbappé in October 2022, the company says The freestyle skier Eileen Gu is also a Mengniu brand ambassador, the company says. Mengniu also calls itself an Olympic worldwide partner, and in July 2024 it hosted a “China Night” in Paris during the Olympic Games.

On 18 December 2021 Mengniu replaced the logo it had used for 22 years. The company says the new mark was designed by Rob Janoff, the designer of Apple’s logo, in his first project for a Chinese consumer brand. Mengniu describes the logo as keeping its Chinese brush-calligraphy characters while letting the “bull’s horn” and “mother river” elements break out of the old frame, set in golden-section proportions, with green as the base colour for the Inner Mongolian grassland.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make dairy products or drinks, and all of them come from China: Yili, Mengniu, Bright Dairy, Nongfu Spring, Wong Lo Kat, JDB and Tsingtao. Chinese dairy, water, herbal-tea and beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names with long local histories to companies that now belong to much larger groups or answer to many shareholders, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A drinks or dairy brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the everyday habit it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, added new plants or grown far beyond the city where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A crisis, a state shareholder and a buying spree.

In September 2008 Mengniu was among the dairies named in the Chinese melamine milk scandal, and trading in its Hong Kong shares was suspended on 17 September, English Wikipedia records.

The ownership changed the following year. On 6 July 2009, Chinese Wikipedia says, a consortium led by the state-owned food group COFCO bought a 20% stake and became Mengniu’s largest shareholder; English Wikipedia describes the sale as making the state the largest shareholder. On 10 June 2011 Niu Gensheng stepped down as chairman and was succeeded by COFCO’s Ning Gaoning, and in 2021 Niu left all his posts at Mengniu, Chinese Wikipedia says. Mengniu still names COFCO as its largest strategic shareholder.

Foreign dairy partners came in alongside. Mengniu set up a joint venture, Mengniu Arla, with Denmark’s Arla Foods in 2006, English Wikipedia says, and Chinese Wikipedia records that Arla took a 5.9% stake in Mengniu in June 2012 and that Danone invested in May 2013 through a joint venture with COFCO. Acquisitions followed: the infant-formula maker Yashili in June 2013, the Australian organic baby-food brand Bellamy’s, completed on 23 December 2019, and a controlling position in the organic milk producer China Shengmu in July 2020, according to Chinese Wikipedia. Mengniu’s website also lists Burra Foods in Victoria, Australia, and the Singapore-founded ice-cream group Aice among its overseas businesses.

Mengniu’s first factory in Southeast Asia is its plant in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia: construction began in March 2018 and it opened that November, Mengniu says, as the 60th factory it had built, making yoghurt, yoghurt drinks and other dairy beverages that it sells across Southeast Asia. Yashili also runs a plant in Auckland, New Zealand, the company says.

For a design guide, Mengniu shows how a young dairy used space flight, talent shows and football to build a national brand, then redrew its calligraphic logo for a global stage. Compare Yili, its Hohhot rival, and Vinamilk, Vietnam’s national dairy. For this guide we use grassland green, a gold and milk white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Mengniu’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.