A few days ago, the "2017 Annual Conference of China's Frozen and Refrigerated Food Industry" was held in Hefei. The Intermediate Cooling Committee and Anhui Agricultural Technology Processing Association jointly issued the "2016 National Research Report on Frozen and Refrigerated Food Industry". "Report" shows that: at present, China's cold chain has made progress, the application of new frozen food technology, consumption structure has changed quietly, promoting the development of China's frozen food industry to usher in a golden period of accelerated development. Frozen and refrigerated food is quietly promoting a "family kitchen revolution" and "reform" of catering production mode.

According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the main business income of the frozen and refrigerated food industry above the national scale reached 2.6 trillion yuan in 2016, accounting for 23.6% of the food industry (excluding tobacco products), an increase of 7.8% over the same period last year. Over the past five years, the total scale of the industry has been continuously enlarged. The market share of frozen and refrigerated food industry has increased from 21.2% to 23.6%, and the market continues to improve. The frozen and refrigerated food industry has developed rapidly, with an average annual growth rate of 9.1% in the past five years, which is higher than that of Industrial Enterprises above the national scale and the average development level of the food industry.

The development trend of frozen and refrigerated food market is characterized by diversification, convenience, multi-function, combination, high conversion rate and harmless hygiene. Market Consumption Characteristics: Varieties of designs and colors are increasing, consumption is increasing year by year, and the popularity of consumption is expanding. Refrigerated food industry enterprises promote development by innovation, market demand-oriented, with the upgrading of market consumption, product categories increase, variety, intensive processing of new products continue to emerge.

Quick-frozen vegetables have become the blue sea of consumer market. With the upgrading of modern consumption and the quickening pace of life, the clean vegetable industry has developed rapidly, the proportion of clean vegetable sales has increased significantly, and new consumption patterns have emerged in the vegetable market. Quick-frozen fruits and vegetables are not only sought after by business units such as group meals, but also enter the daily consumption of the people in large quantities. Quick-frozen conditioning food is in the ascendant. The market of hot pot products mainly consisting of frozen surimi products and frozen meat products has great potential. The market for frozen baked goods is fragrant. With the development of freeze-baking technology, in 2016, freeze-baked foods in China are developing in the direction of variety diversity, health and convenience. In addition, the market of high-end meat products - low-temperature meat products tends to be better. Income and profit of meat processing industry increased simultaneously in 2016. The 4046 Enterprises above the industry scale have realized 1.4 trillion yuan in main business income, an increase of 7.7% over the previous year, and a profit of 71.4 billion yuan, an increase of 8.9% over the previous year. The level of intelligence and automation in the industry has been improved, and the proportion of intensive processing products has increased.

New technology promotes the strong development of frozen food industry by using modern high-tech food. Frozen food industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today. The development trend of frozen food industry in China is to develop frozen food in the direction of ultra-low temperature freezing. The development direction is to spray liquid nitrogen, liquid Freon and liquid carbon dioxide directly into the refrigeration device, which can make the temperature drop. To a much lower degree of cryogenic than ammonia compressor, it is possible to freeze ultra-low temperature; food from the overall freezing to granular freezing; refrigeration technology and cold storage to a variety of food and specialization direction; some new thawing technologies such as high-frequency microwave thawing, high-pressure thawing technology are gradually applied to frozen food.

Innovative R&D highlights the driving force of development as an important emerging area of industry development, and innovative R&D of frozen and refrigerated food is in full swing. Web of Science uses "frozen food" as its keyword for subject retrieval, and the number of papers has increased nearly five times since 2000. There are 1091 patents searched by "frozen food" on China Patent Information Network, of which about 50% are applied in the past five years. USPTO searches for "frozen food" with 78 patents, and 89 patents related to "frozen food" are searched on Japan Industrial Property Digital Library. There were 21.8 million results retrieved from "frozen food" on Google and 2.49 million results retrieved from Google Scholar.

Actively participating in the international market competition in frozen and refrigerated food is the main force of China's food import and export trade, accounting for 21.4% of the total import and export trade of food. According to customs statistics, in 2016, the import and export value of frozen and refrigerated food in China was 227.58 billion yuan, an increase of 20.8% over the same period last year, showing a trend of rapid increase in import amount.

The report predicts the development trend of frozen and refrigerated food industry: more large-scale production will be formed in the future. China is gradually improving and perfecting the standard and regulation system of frozen food industry, strengthening industry management and macro-control, formulating a series of targeted normative standards to ensure the improvement of product quality.

Source of this article: (China Food Safety Daily)