With the increase of per capita income, consumers' living standards and consumption habits have also changed. Coupled with the improvement of the current level of cold chain logistics technology and the increased demand for semi-finished ingredients in the catering industry, the user range of quick-frozen food that focuses on lazy economy has further increased.
Quick-frozen food refers to low-temperature products made from fresh raw materials, properly treated and rapidly frozen, and delivered to the place of consumption under consistent low temperature conditions of -18 °C to -20 °C. Quick-frozen food can be divided into four categories: conditioning quick-frozen food, agricultural quick-frozen food, livestock quick-frozen food, and aquatic quick-frozen food.
The quality of quick-frozen food is always higher than that of slow-frozen food, and quick-freezing can well avoid the adverse effects of frozen food caused by the growth of ice crystals during the freezing process, thereby affecting the taste and nutrition of food, so there is no need to add any preservatives and additives. According to the quantuo data survey, the market size of quick-frozen food in the mainland has increased from 105.5 billion yuan to 168 billion yuan. It is predicted that the market size of mainland frozen food will reach 185 billion yuan in 2021.
The data shows that Chinese consumers prefer hot pot food quick-frozen food, followed by meat, dumplings and tangyuan. Consumers consider multiple factors when buying quick-frozen food, more than half of the respondents consider the quality and taste of quick-frozen food, and nearly half of consumers consider the price, brand and nutritional value of quick-frozen food.
At present, the leading enterprises in China's quick-frozen food industry are Anjing Food and Sanquan Food. Their product structure is quite different, Sanquan Foods prefers frozen rice products with lower prices but high market share, while Yasui Quick-frozen Food product structure is biased towards meat products and fish products with higher prices but lower market share.
From the perspective of consumer groups, more than 90% of consumers have purchased quick-frozen food, and only a very small number of respondents have never purchased quick-frozen food, which shows that the penetration rate of quick-frozen food in China is very high. Among them, more than 50% of Chinese consumers under the age of 40 have a general willingness to buy frozen food; more than 30% of Chinese consumers over the age of 30 have a strong willingness to buy frozen food, and a large proportion of Chinese consumers over the age of 40 are loyal fans of frozen food. In the future, improving the repurchase rate of consumers for quick-frozen food is the key to the development of the quick-frozen food industry.
In recent years, the online retail industry has maintained a stable growth trend, efficient logistics system, perfect after-sales service so that e-commerce platforms have become people's trusted shopping channels, online retail has also become an important part of social retail. The retail business of quick-frozen food has also been expanded by relying on reliable e-commerce platforms, which in turn has promoted the development of quick-frozen food enterprises.
According to Quantuo statistics, there are currently 1.127 million frozen food-related enterprises nationwide, but a total of 67,000 related enterprises have been added in the first eight months of this year, down 56% year-on-year. It can be seen from the data that although the number of registrations of quick-frozen food-related enterprises has declined this year, the total number is still very large.
Quantuo data believes that with the improvement of living conditions, people's consumption habits have also changed, followed by the development of cold chain technology has also accelerated the increase of frozen food categories, the previous transportation restrictions can not produce frozen food has now become a problem, the future diversification of frozen food will further promote consumers to buy frozen food. In addition, the catering industry is still in rapid development, and quick-frozen food still plays a very important role in it. All in all, the development prospects of the domestic quick-frozen product industry in the future are relatively good.