Supermarkets are set to trial a Daigou register that will allow Australia’s 40,000 Chinese personal shoppers to buy unlimited milk formula.
Special registers would give baby formula manufacturers a clear indication on customer demand and prevent large stocks of the product being brazenly stripped off supermarket shelves and being exported to overseas buyers.
The move, to be pitched to supermarket executives next month, would allow supermarkets to stop customers from breaching store’s two tin limit.
Chinese immigrants and students are reportedly raking in $100,000 a year by shipping baby formula back to their country.
One woman admitted to Daily Mail Australia she earns $90,000 each year selling formula overseas.
Molder Sayrao began her lucrative business when she arrived in Sydney to study at Macquarie University in 2014 and her family asked her to send things back.
Word spread and soon the 31-year-old was shipping bags of vitamins, skincare products, and baby formula through social media app WeChat.
Following the phenomenon, a daigou – or overseas personal shoppers – register will be pitched to supermarket executives next month.
The register hopes to keep track of the country’s estimated 40,000 daigou, according to Seven News.
Vitamin companies Swisse and Blackmores have been running daigou programs for years.
The plan would also aid supermarkets’ profit margins and ultimately stop scuffles in the aisles.
Earlier this month, Melbourne mother Catherine Urriola, 34, was left traumatised after encountering ‘chaotic scenes’ in the baby formula aisle at Woolworths.
Ms Urriola, a sales representative, captured video footage of the desperate shoppers scuffle towards boxes of baby formula stationed in the middle of the aisle.
The tins, which were yet to be stocked onto the shelves, continue to cause headlines across the country as shoppers pack supermarkets for the sought-after product which is popular on China’s black market.
The video footage shows a number of shoppers walk hastily towards the boxes, while Ms Urriola narrates the scene.
‘Look at this, look. Unbelievable,’ she said in the video.
