In recent years, dehydrated vegetables are favored by more and more consumers. In China, the consumption market of dehydrated vegetables is constantly expanding. In foreign trade, dehydrated vegetables are also the main products of China's vegetable export earning foreign exchange.
Recently, Gao Zhuhua, president of the National Fruit and Vegetable Dehydration Processing Industry Federation, said in an interview with the media that the dehydrated vegetable processing industry has great development potential and is a "sunshine industry". At the same time, the industrial upgrade is also facing a bottleneck that needs to be broken .
Producing high value-added "sunshine industries" in big countries
China is a large country producing dehydrated vegetables. Data show that the annual output of dehydrated vegetables in China is about 800,000 tons, accounting for about 60% of the world's total output.
China is a large agricultural country with its vast territory and diverse climate. China has abundant vegetable resources and a wide variety of vegetables, which has advantages in vegetable production. All provinces and regions have promoted the development of the industry by their advantages in production and formed their own characteristics. Such as medlar and tomatoes in Ningxia, onions and potatoes in Gansu, green peppers, red peppers and carrots in Shanxi, chives from Xinghua in Jiangsu, garlic and cabbage in Shandong.
Compared to ordinary vegetables, processed dehydrated vegetables have a relatively high added value, and are the main products of China's vegetable export earning foreign exchange. Taking Ningxia as an example, in the first 10 months of this year, Ningxia exported a total of 16.624 million US dollars of dehydrated vegetables, a year-on-year increase of 138.5%.
Export barriers industry standards to be upgraded
China exports about 100,000 tons of dehydrated vegetables each year, which means that half of the dehydrated vegetables produced throughout the year are exported.
Exported vegetables require a "recording base" and "traceability", which is equivalent to "each product has an identity card." Which field the vegetables are grown in and which factory is processed are traceable. This is a mandatory requirement.
As an agricultural product export, dehydrated vegetables must strictly abide by the requirements of the importing country on indicators such as pesticide residues and heavy metals. In fact, how to connect the testing standards at home and abroad is a major problem that has plagued China's fruit and vegetable exports for a long time, because different countries often have different requirements on agricultural residues and other aspects.
In 2013, after the promulgation of the Maximum Residue Limits for Pesticides in Foods, China added more than 1,400 testing standards, but compared with other developed countries, there is still a large gap.
In the relevant standards and specifications for dehydrated vegetables, there is no special description and regulation on the limits of pesticide residues. Some people in the industry pointed out that the dehydration process has a concentrated effect on the residues of dehydrated vegetables. It is unreasonable to limit the dehydrated vegetables according to the limit of residues of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Regarding the status quo of dehydrated vegetable industry industry standards, industry insiders have called for "the industry associations should cooperate with relevant departments to make corresponding amendments to some standards and issue them by authoritative departments, which is conducive to the development of industry standards and also facilitates supervision" .
Industrial upgrading improves product technical content
In the past, low labor cost was our competitive advantage. Now, our labor cost has gone up. Labor costs now account for one-third of the cost.
Today's labor cost is increasing, China's dehydrated vegetable industry is still a "labor-intensive" industry. Foreign countries have a high degree of automation, and we have to rely on manual work, which can only be said to be "semi-automatic."
Some companies have also introduced advanced foreign production lines, but foreign lines may not be applicable to China.
The pipeline designed by foreigners is aimed at locally produced food, such as potatoes, but some agricultural products with Chinese characteristics, such as chives, cannot be produced on the imported pipeline. Under such circumstances, the production of dehydrated vegetables still requires a lot of labor.
From the perspective of production technology, most of China's dehydrated vegetable companies are still using drying and dehydration technology, and only a small number of enterprises have adopted freeze-dehydration technology, which is also a gap from abroad.
热 Heat-processed foods often have large color changes, loss of flavor, and poor taste. In contrast, freeze-drying technology is more advanced and can better maintain the original nutrition and taste of the vegetables themselves. Correspondingly, freeze-drying technology also requires greater cost investment.
Low technical content and low equipment level are the limiting factors for the current industrial development. The intensity of industrial transformation still needs to be strengthened.
There are four main types of dehydrated vegetable products, 80% of which are still traditional dehydrated vegetable products. Condiments account for 10% of the total, and health foods and instant foods account for 5%. The entire dehydrated vegetable industry still fails to extend its tentacles downstream of the industrial chain, and more efforts should be made to develop and promote new products.
Reduce labor costs, promote the industry from labor-intensive to automation and semi-automation, improve the technical content of products, and extend the industrial chain to downstream products. This is the direction that future industrial development needs to work hard.
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