Price of baby milk powder in Singapore has gone up by nearly 40%

Babyment

Price of baby milk powder in Singapore has increased by 20.3% to 39.3% over the last 4 years and 3 months. Babyment.com collected data early this month about baby milk powder sold in Singapore and noticed the increase when compared with data collected in December 2012.

1. Price of baby milk powder in December 2012 and March 2017*

Tables below show the cost per 100 grams of baby milk powder by stage:

Table 1: Price per 100 grams of stage 1 formula milk (SGD)

Table 2: Price per 100 grams of stage 2 formula milk (SGD)

Table 3: Price per 100 grams of stage 3 formula milk (SGD)

(a). On average, the price of baby milk powder sold in Singapore has increased by 26.8%.

(b). Smallest increase is the Enfa products by Mead Johnson (21.3% for Stage 1, 20.7% for Stage 2 and 22.3% for Stage 3) while the Nestle Nan H.A. products experience the greatest increases (39.3% for stage 1, 37.1% for stage 2 and 34.7% for stage 3)

(c). Manufacturers claim they have made improvement to the baby milk powder sold in Singapore in the last 4 years. These include the Similac series products by Abbott and Enfa series products by Mead Johnson.

2. Price comparison with China and Malaysia *

Tables below show the cost per 100 grams of baby milk powder in Singapore, China and Malaysia by stage.

Table 4: Price per 100 grams of stage 1 formula milk in Singapore, China and Malaysia (SGD)

Table 5: Price per 100gram of stage 1 formula milk in Singapore, China and Malaysia (SGD)

Table 6: Price per 100gram of stage 3 formula milk in Singapore, China and Malaysia (SGD)

(a). Baby milk powder sold in Singapore is more expensive than those sold in Malaysia, with two of them (Similac stage 3 and Friso Gold 3) sold at a price that is 2.2 times of similar ones in Malaysia.

(b). Baby milk powder in Singapore is in general more expensive than those in China except Nestle Nan H.A. series.

(c). Products sold in different countries may be different in terms of nutrition level due to different food regulatory requirement by the country’s governing authority.

3. Breastmilk is the best for babies

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends exclusive breastfeeding (that is the infant only receives breast milk without any additional food or drink, not even water) for the first six months of life.

To protect and promote breastfeeding in Singapore, the Ministry of Health (MOH) established the Sale of Infant Foods Ethics Committee, Singapore (SIFECS) in 1979. This Committee formulated and implemented the 'Code of Ethics on the Sale of Infant Foods in Singapore. *

At Babyment, we advocate and promote breastfeeding. We provide information about breastfeeding through our website. *

4. About Babyment

Babyment.com is a one-stop pregnancy and parenting portal in Singapore. Our mission is to help parents and parents-to-be save money and time in pregnancy and parenthood journey.

Babyment shares the latest baby products promotion in Singapore in an attempt to help parents to save money.

Babyment also provides time-base and location-base pregnancy and parenting information to help parents and parents-to-be save time and effort in raising children.

5. Data collection and verification

(a). All data is computed based on selling price of a can of baby milk powder that has a net weight of milk of 800g to 900g.

(b). All data about baby milk powder sold in Singapore is collected through visits to supermarket NTUC Fairprice and Cold Storage. In general, there is no difference in price sold for all baby milk powder in Singapore in major supermarkets like Fairprice, Cold Storage, Shengsiong and Giant.

(c). Majority of data about baby milk powder price in 2012 (except stage 1 formula) can be verified through another independent database owned by babyment where we share our website visitor latest promotion in baby milk powder in which we also include original price.

(d). Wyeth, Nestle, Abbott, Mead Johnson and Friso have official stores in e-commerce platform jd.com in China and we use the original selling price of products sold in these official stores.

(e). Wyeth and Nestle Nan have official store in e-commerce platform lazada and we use the original selling price of products sold in these official stores for these two brands. For other brands sold in Malaysia, we use the average selling price of products on the two supermarkets Tesco and Jaya Grocer.

(f). Exchange rate used in computation: SGD : RMB = 1 : 4.94 and SGD : RM = 1 : 3.17. We followed the rate found on 20^th March 2017 on Google.com.sg

6. Notes and explanation

(a). Not all formula milk sold in Singapore are included in our data collection.

(b). In 2012, stage 1 formula sold by Mead Johnson was called Enfalac, stage 2 Enfapro, stage 3 Enfagro.

(c). China and Malaysia have been chosen for comparison due to similar products sold in these two countries.

(d). Naming of the products may be slightly different. For example, in Malaysia, the stage 1 formula by Mead Johnson company is called Enfalac, instead of Enfamil.

(e). Details of code can be found at https://www.healthhub.sg/live-healthy/530/SIFECS%20Code%20of%20Ethics.

(f). Details of breastfeeding information on babyment.com website is https://www.babyment.com/pregnancy-parenting.php?maincategory=infant&subcategory=breastfeeding