MILK POWDER in Chinese OATLY?! -

Hi Alex!

Many thanks for reaching out. We appreciate you being our fan!

Hear you and we understand that these questions came up when you got your moon cake at Hema.

Our own products – produced in our oat factories - are a 100% suitable for vegans; they are plant-based without any trace of an animal or animal products in them. This because our mission as a company is to offer oat based products in the dairy section to promote the plant-based shift, for the sake of the health as well as the planet. Wow no cow, as you point out! 

To promote this shift to as many as possible across the globe we sometimes partner up with people and companies that might not be vegan (or even vegetarian). We want to focus on the areas where we can have an impact! This is why we welcome those who’d like to use oat drink as an ingredient to replace dairy (fully, or to the most part). Most importantly, we want to encourage both people and companies who’d like to ‘dip their toe’ into the vegan world since every little step towards more plant-based foods counts.

So, yes – you may find products in the future including our oat drink as well as other ingredients. It’s very important though that our partners are transparent about what’s included on the package and we hope that in this case you were able to see the content of the moon cake.

Let us know your thoughts on this! We’re always happy to chat. Also, we apologize you didn’t hear back from us previously. We’d appreciate if you could let us know in which way you made contact?

Thank you again!

Love,

Åsa at Oatly

Hi Asa, 

I'm Max from Vegans of Beijing. 

I appreciate how Oatly has been doing great work to provide alternative milk products in the Chinese market, for vegans and non-vegans. In Starbucks, Woods, and other cafes, your oat coffee has become very popular all across China. My non-vegan friends talked about how they prefer Oat coffee, too.

So in Chinese young people's eyes, the Oatly brand means fun and yummy milk alternative. However, after one of our Vegans of Beijing members found that your moon cake with Hema contains milk and eggs, we all feel being cheated. I mean, it's marketed and labelled as an Oatly brand product, not a Hema product with Oatly ingredient, because Hema is a only connoisseur grocery market! Some of our members decided to abandon your products right away. What's more, the scandal has been discussed in all of our wechat groups for pages! 

How do you want us to understand Oatly from now on? An oat company with possible milk products? And every time you purchase Oatly, you should check the ingredient list carefully? In that case, although there's still milk replacement to a certain percentage, it sounds mediocre, time-consuming, and confusing...If that's your China stategy, as a Chinese vegan, I feel sorry about that.

I hope you can reconsider the marketing strategy and be careful about using Oatly brands when collaborating with other business partners. It doesn't worth it  to sacrifice your brand to please those who's ignorant about your core values and lose your loyal customers along the way. I agree that we need to make plant-based options available to more people, not just the vegans, but don't be shy about the benefits of vegan lifestyle. It benefits the animals, our environment, and ourselves over the long term. More people should know this, and that's both your and our mission! We at Vegans of Beijing are volunteering our time to promote gentle veganism and make the vegan options available to more people, and hopefully, along our path, we can collaborate in the future, instead of ignoring each other! If you want to join our community, you can add me on wechat and I'll bring you in. My wechat id: tofuteacher.

All the best wishes!

Max

I feel like other brands that want to position themselves as "eco friendly" and ride the wave of popularity for enviromental issues  are using the Oatly brand to try to ride on Oatlys coattails, when these other brands aren't really doing anything for the environment and are actually probably doing even more harm with their "saving the planet" products...and Oatly is letting them use the Oatly brand for this, which I don't like at all. 

Hi there,

My name is Zoë and I’m a long-time Oatly consumer living here in China.

I am extremely disappointed by your decision to add milk powder to your Oatly x HEMA moon cake collaboration.

I and many others make the assumption that your products are without dairy. Whenever I see the Oatly name, I trust in it’s dairy free status! Very rarely would I check the ingredients. Thank goodness someone here did, and shared it with the vegan social groups here in China. I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

I think this is something you really need to consider going forward… if we can expect more of these products containing milk, I can no longer put trust in your ‘wow, no cow’ brand.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on this! We understand that when Oatly is included as an ingredient one assumes the product is 100% plant-based. However when it comes to collaborations with partners we see it as a positive step forward when the idea of replacing dairy with oats is embraced. Every small step counts!

Please do rest assured our own Oatly range is and will always be plant-based (please see our products here). 

All this said, we hear your input and will keep all of what you say in mind going forward!

All the best,

Inez at Oatly 

@max_song @lionel_roudaut @tom_chapman @emory_babb @Joey422 @ZoeInTheEast @phillip_atkinson 

Hi everyone!

Popping in for an update.

First of all, we’d like to say thank you for reaching out about this topic.

Secondly, you should always be able to trust any product that shows the Oatly logo is 100% free of cow-dairy.

So, moving forward we will not, under any circumstances, combine our oat drink with a product containing cow-dairy ingredients anywhere in the world.

Any thoughts or questions you may have, we’re here to chat as always.

Love,
Oatly

@max_song @lionel_roudaut @tom_chapman @emory_babb @Joey422 @ZoeInTheEast @phillip_atkinson @VeganinChina

I'm even not from China but I'm super disappointed now...