China News Service, Beijing, October 29 (Zhong Yu, Zhao Fangyuan) On the eve of "Double Eleven", the well-known health care product brand Swisse has once again been involved in product quality disputes.
Recently, the Import and Export Food Safety Bureau of the General Administration of Customs issued a risk warning notice, citing information from the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), saying that two batches of "SWISSE" brand "Beauty Skin Regeneration+" products were found to have lead content exceeding the standard limit, and relevant companies will recall the products involved. At present, no products involved have been found to be imported through general trade channels in China. In response, Swisse responded that the products involved have not entered the Chinese market.
"Swisse Beauty Skin Regeneration+", also known as "anti-sugar pills", claims to help metabolize sugar and carbohydrates and support collagen formation. Public information shows that Swisse was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. In 2015, H&H Group acquired 83% of its shares for approximately A$1.386 billion, and eventually achieved full ownership. In the first half of 2026, the revenue of Hianhe Group's adult nutrition and care products segment reached 3.973 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.9%. Among them, Swisse achieved year-on-year growth of 20.5% in the Chinese market.
This is not the first time Swisse has been involved in quality disputes. In March this year, Swisse's "Reba Same Style" milk thistle tablets were found to contain less than half of the silibinin content in each tablet. In June of the same year, another of its core products, Coenzyme Q10, was involved in the "AB product" controversy. The brand operated both the overseas version and the domestic version in the domestic market. The active ingredients of the domestic version were less than one-third of the overseas version, but the price of a single pill of the domestic version was higher than the overseas version.
In response to this recall, Swisse's overseas flagship store responded to a reporter from China News Network saying that Swisse Australia found that the lead content in product batches 144520 and 143217 slightly exceeded the standard. The company has taken the initiative to recall the relevant batches, and the products were recalled in controllable aspects of the Australian market. The batches involved this time only exist in Australia and have not entered the Chinese market. All products currently sold through formal channels in China strictly comply with the relevant requirements of Australia's TGA, and their quality and safety are not affected.
However, "not entering China" refers to general trade terms. It is difficult for brands to recall the batches of products involved that were circulated through cross-border channels and purchasing agents.
In this regard, Bai Wenxi, vice chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, believes that general trade channels can be clearly cut off by the company, but cross-border e-commerce, purchasing agents, personal carry products, etc., which are the core revenue sources and are sold to mainland China through non-general trade channels, are difficult for brands to reach.
"This not only exposes the company's problems with elemental impurity control at the production end, but also exposes double loopholes such as the brand's use of 'regular channels' to cut responsibilities and the ineffectiveness of the cross-border channel recall system. In the long run, this loss of trust is even more fatal," said Bo Wenxi.
Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, analyzed that the trust discount is first reflected in the repurchase rate of cross-border channels. In the past, many users paid because of the Australian origin and TGA endorsement. After the continuous quality control disputes, the trust of old users began to shake. The decline in repurchase will be directly reflected in the repurchase data of single stores. This indicator is reflected faster than revenue.
Jiang Han believes that if Hianhe Group wants to restore trust, simply adjusting the origin narrative is useless. Consumers will not pay again just to "change the story." The priority is to invest real money in quality control and expose the full-link traceability system so that users can actually see the changes. "It is a more pragmatic path to first make up the foundation of quality control and then talk about subsequent adjustments to the brand narrative."
