CROWDS of desperate shoppers have been filmed lining up in the dark outside a Melbourne chemist to snap up baby formula the moment the doors open, before it even hits shelves.
The Herald Sun reports up to 20 customers were seen queuing from 7am on two separate occasions last week outside My Chemist, on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Flinders Lane, some with shopping trolleys.
When staff opened the doors at 7:30am, the shoppers quickly grabbed boxes of A2 and Aptamil baby formula before it could be unpacked. The shoppers reportedly queue for new deliveries three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“As a long-time local resident I am dismayed that businesses are allowing people without children to profiteer at the expense of Australian mothers that do [have children],” said one local resident named Paul, who said he was “disgusted” by the practice.
Another My Chemist location about 200m away has a dedicated “pack-and-send” station, where personal shoppers known as “daigou” can send their products directly to customers back in China.
Last month, 31-year-old Sydney woman Molder Sayrao explained how she earned up to $1700 per week in profit, or nearly $90,000 a year, sending products back to her 1500 regular customers.
“I have a full-time job as well,” she said. “Daigou is like an extra job I can finish on the weekend, if I have a day off I just go to the store.”
There are an estimated 80,000 daigou in Australia, many of them Chinese students, some of whom can earn more than $100,000 a year selling baby formula, vitamins and skincare products to customers on social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo.
A tin of baby formula costs around $20-23 in Australia but can fetch more than double that in China, where demand for Australian-made products has soared since 2008, when six babies died and an estimated 54,000 were hospitalised by contaminated formula.
Coles, Woolworths and major chemists have all introduced two tin per customer limits on formula in recent months in response to complaints from customers following long-running shelf shortages.
Despite purchase limits and the launch of a dedicated diagou retailer, intended to bring some order to the grey market trade, chaotic scenes of shoppers stripping supermarket and chemist shelves of formula have not stopped.
Earlier this year, a Brisbane mum snapped photos of Woolworths customers filling up an entire trolley full of baby formula in full view of the supermarket’s service desk, blatantly flouting the purchase limit.
In October, customers were filmed stuffing cans into their baskets straight from a loading pallet at a Coles in Melbourne. The previous month, a Brisbane shopper filmed a group of women running into a Coles to grab fresh stock, while in August another Brisbane mum snapped photos of groups of up to eight people stripping shelves.
Predictions that moves by brands including A2 and Bellamy’s to sell more product direct into China would kill off the industry have also not been borne out.
Ben Sun, director of marketing consultancy Think China, has previously said the “grassroots diagou”, the ones who go to Coles, Woolworths or Chemist Warehouse, would “always be there”.
“It is usually a part-time or side business they’re doing,” he said. “As a part-time job, [they would be earning] roughly $20,000 to $30,000 a year. Someone earning over $100,000 is probably not someone that goes to Coles and Woolworths to clear shelves.
“The two-can limit seems to be the best we can do. You can’t really stop people buying from retail shops, and you can’t judge people by their race or the language they speak.”
According to the recently launched Australia China Daigou Association, the daigou market is worth an estimated $850 million annually. The launch of the ACDA received bipartisan political support.
“Daigou is an important and fast-growing trade channel for Australia,” Small Business Minister Craig Laundy said last month, with Shadow Trade Minister Jason Clare adding, “Daigou benefit the Australian economy by stimulating opportunities for Australian manufactures to sell into China.”
ACDA president Dr Matthew McDougall said in a statement last month the association was focused on creating a “much-needed framework for increased co-operation and improved trading practices across the sector”.
“Daigou fundamentally understand they can’t continue to source baby formula from shelves en masse but their options are limited,” he said.
“As an Association, we need to create opportunities for manufactures to work directly with the daigou community and improve the way daigou shoppers go about purchasing and shipping items to their buyers back in mainland China.”
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