The Zibo National New & High-tech Industrial Development Zone – located in Zibo city, in East China's Shandong province – on April 27 promoted its Qilu Prefabricated Food Industrial Park, to attract more ready-to-eat food manufacturing companies to base their operations there.
Nearly 200 related enterprises participated in the promotional event, either on site or online.
Ready-to-eat meals, generally known as semi-prepared dishes, can be eaten through simple processes such as the microwave, boiling and oven heating.
They are in hot demand recently due to their convenience and the arrival of COVID-19.
China's current market size for ready-to-eat food is about 300 billion yuan ($47 billion), with the potential to expand to 1 trillion yuan in the next six to seven years and more than 3 trillion yuan in the long run, according to a report released by Shenzhen-based research firm AskCI Consulting.
Local governments of district and county-level in Zibo are tapping the massive market and in February, a ready-made meal industry association was established in Shandong province.
Based on the industrial food park now under construction, the Zibo National New & High-tech Industrial Development Zone plans to integrate the processes of research and development, manufacturing, delivering and consumption, in order to operate new models like a "central kitchen" and unmanned intelligent deliveries.
"The prefabricated food industry is bound to be large-scale, standardized and branded in the future, so whoever can better integrate the resources – upstream and downstream, internal and external – is likely to win the competition," said a manager of Shejian Technology (Beijing) Co Ltd, which currently owns 300 ready-to-eat retail outlets in China.
As the origin of the Lu cuisine and a large agricultural base in China, Zibo is blessed with abundant raw materials and has an established network for researching and sales. Coupled with its cooperation with leading enterprises, Zibo's prepared food industry is said to ushering in opportunities for its high-quality development.
Some ready-to-eat dishes go on display. They were prepared by a company based in the Boshan district of Zibo. [Photo/Dazhong News]
