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recently, the reporter visited the beijing market and found that gift box mooncakes are still the main sales, with prices ranging from 19.9 yuan to 498 yuan. a supermarket salesperson told the reporter: "the best-selling ones are still the gift boxes of around 200 yuan. mooncakes at this price are more suitable for gifts."

the "2024 mid-autumn mooncake industry trend report" released by the china bakery and confectionery industry association shows that this year's gift box mooncake prices are mainly distributed in three areas: affordable mooncakes below 60 yuan, regular mooncakes from 70 yuan to 220 yuan, and high-end gift boxes from 280 yuan to 499 yuan. gift box mooncake products priced over 500 yuan have basically withdrawn from the regular market.

recently, in the hot search discussion of "why mooncakes are not selling well", a netizen commented: "half of the price is for mooncakes, and half is for the exquisite packaging." many netizens also believe that excessive packaging leads to high prices for mooncakes, which is the reason why they are reluctant to buy mooncakes. gift box packaging is an important link in the upstream of the mooncake industry. the "2022 china mooncake supply chain and customer consumption trend big data monitoring report" released by imedia consulting shows that the average annual cost of mooncake packaging in china exceeds 2.5 billion yuan, with a gross profit margin of up to 27.5%.

this year marks the third year of the implementation of the national standard "requirements for restricting excessive packaging of goods for food and cosmetics" and its no. 1 amendment in the mooncake industry. all mooncake and related packaging industry companies have adopted the standard in 2022 to eliminate excessive packaging and resist "one point mooncake, nine points packaging". the "general principles of mooncake quality" officially implemented on april 1 this year clearly states that the number of packaging layers of mooncakes cannot exceed three, and precious materials such as precious metals and mahogany should not be used for packaging; for mooncakes with a sales price of more than 100 yuan, the proportion of packaging costs to the sales price shall not exceed 15%.

these standards limit the packaging costs of high-priced mooncakes, preventing companies from over-investing in packaging, thereby making the prices of mooncakes more reasonable and allowing consumers to buy more cost-effective products.

under the guidance of policies, the packaging of mooncake products has been significantly "slimmed down" this year. the laboratory of china light industry inspection and certification co., ltd. (national food quality inspection and testing center) tested gift box packaged mooncake samples from more than ten companies randomly selected. the results showed that the packaging void rate of all samples was ≤30%, and all passed.

the reporter also observed in the gift box mooncake area of ​​the supermarket that the gift boxes that used to have novel shapes are now mostly packaged in flat rectangular shapes, and the overall design is simpler.

□ li guyun, trainee reporter of this newspaper