Booming Asia more important than it looks for Blackmores

I followed up yesterday's post with another this morning on Blackmores. The full year results numbers surprised me somewhat. The official numbers suggest sales grew more in Australia than Asia, whereas I had thought Asia was driving the renaissance. One of our blog readers, however, tells me the official numbers are not telling the true story: "Whist true the 43% headline Australian growth figure, it actually masks an enormous amount of product that is getting shipped to China thru’ Australian channels. Pharmacists & other distributors constantly get approached by Chinese nationals wanting to place $50,000-$100,000 orders of stock at 'cost plus 2%' for shipping to China. They’d love to do it as apparently the orders would be continuous; problem is Blackmores can’t supply stock as many of their retail end suppliers are clamouring for the same thing and their plants are working at capacity. Blackmores are rationing stock as a result to their retail accounts would you believe." Wow. (VIEW LINK)