Humans have changed the shape of food, and the food industry is changing human eating habits. Thought the “disappearance” of canned goods, in a new way reappeared in front of consumers.
Recently, a bottle of mysterious power from the northeast – canned yellow peaches, by consumers crazy snapping up.
“There is nothing that a can of canned yellow peaches can not solve, if not, then two cans.” In the hearts of Northeasterners, canned yellow peaches is God. When I had a fever as a young child, my mother threw a spoonful of canned yellow peaches water, simply the height of maternal love epitomized.
However canned in thousands of households, gradually forgotten, for a long time, can be put in the corner, or even disappeared from the shelves.
The “China Canned Food Industry Production and Sales Demand and Investment Forecast Analysis Report” shows that China’s canned food production steadily ranked first in the world, but the per capita annual consumption of only 1 kg, while the United States per capita annual consumption of canned food in about 90 kg, Western Europe is about 50 kg.
01 Canned yellow peaches “seal of God”
During the epidemic, canned food unexpectedly turned red, it is also time to get reacquainted with it.
Perhaps even the yellow peaches themselves could not have imagined that one day they would beat all fruits and become the most popular canned food.
Recently, sold off in addition to ibuprofen, even flowers, and other drugs, but also canned yellow peaches. Online store daily sales surged from more than a thousand to tens of thousands of orders, Lin’s store, sincerely the daily sales of canned goods on the million, set off a national purchase boom.
Why canned yellow peaches? Is it just because of the “peach” over a robbery? This is to start with the Northeast “metaphysics”.
In the past, the northeast has “sick to eat canned yellow peaches” a saying. For many people in the Northeast, canned yellow peaches is their exclusive memory, and is one of the necessary treatment for colds and fevers.
In the early years, the Northeast fruit is rare and difficult to transport difficult to preserve, especially in winter, most areas can eat limited fruit, and many people have developed the habit of eating canned fruit, and even become a tradition.
Of course, canned fruit, which can replenish water, sugar and vitamin C, has also become the preferred nutritional product for patients. Especially for children, when sick, every bite of cool sweet is a wonderful spiritual comfort, canned yellow peaches have become a “protector”.
In addition, yellow peaches are mainly grown in northern, central and southwestern China, Shandong Pingyi, Zhejiang Jiashan, Hunan Yanling, Liaoning Dalian, etc. are famous yellow peach production areas.
Among them, Dalian, Liaoning Province is both an important city for growing yellow peaches in China, but also the main production area of canning. Early in the Republic of China, Dalian canning has taken shape. By the 1990s, Dalian Canned Food Factory alone, canned varieties of up to 300, canned fruit is also at this time into ordinary people’s homes.
“When I had a fever as a child, my mother bought me canned yellow peaches. I don’t remember much from taking medicine, but a bottle of canned food went down and the fever went down.” Lin Lin from the northeast to the view tide of new consumption (ID: TideSight), said, “It must also be a glass can, strong.”
With the development of logistics and planting technology, the people of the Northeast to achieve fruit freedom, canned yellow peaches gradually withdrew from the mainstream snack market, but this does not affect its status in the hearts of consumers.
Especially these days, canned yellow peaches “magic” pull full, attracting consumers to buy. Soon, some of the platforms of canned yellow peaches were bought out of stock.
Data show that in the last month, Jingdong supermarket sales of canned yellow peaches skyrocketed, up 245% over the same period last year, sales are three times the canned oranges. As of December 12, canned yellow peaches purchased in the top three regions are Beijing, Liaoning, Hebei.
China Canning Industry Association Vice President Chamber of Commerce Ming said that many manufacturers have been a shortage of packaging materials, and logistics tensions, the country’s canned fruit sales are expected to grow by 15% this year.
On December 9, the canning brand Lin Jia Puzi issued an article on a social media platform to dispel rumors that the canned yellow peaches themselves do not have any medicinal effect, and advised netizens to stock up rationally and not to follow blindly. It also said that the current supply is sufficient, no need to panic, and no need to mad rush.
December 10, the can brand sincerely also repeatedly responded that the majority of netizens’ rational consumption do not blindly follow, with the text “canned yellow peaches will bless every northeastern child.”
Canned yellow peaches is not medicine, nor is it metaphysical, consumers naturally understand, they buy childhood memories, is the sentiment.
02 Misunderstood canned goods
There are many categories of canned goods, in addition to canned fruit, there are canned seafood, canned vegetables, canned meat and so on, both canned food and canned beverages.
Historically, the earliest cans were made from glass jars with cork and wire tightly plugged.
In 1795, the French emperor Napoleon led the army to conquer the four sides, living for a long time on board the seafarers because they could not eat fresh vegetables, fruits, and other food and illness, some also suffered from serious life-threatening scurvy. In order to solve the problem of food storage when marching in war, the French government used a huge prize of 12,000 francs to solicit methods of long-term food storage.
After continuous research and practice, the Frenchman Nicolas Appel and his wife, who operated candied food, finally succeeded in 1804. He will treat the food, and then into a wide mouth jar, all placed in a pot of boiling water, heated for 30-60 minutes, while hot with a cork tightly, and then reinforced with thread or sealed with wax, this technology was patented in 1810 after the public. This approach can preserve food for a longer period of time without spoilage and is the prototype of modern canning.
Appel’s glass cans soon after the introduction of the British Peter Duren developed thin tin cans made of tin, which is also the originator of today’s tin cans.
In 1862, the French biologist Pasteur published a paper clarifying that food spoilage is caused by bacteria. As a result, canning factories use steam sterilization technology to make canned food to achieve absolute sterility standards. Today’s aluminum foil packaging cans were born in the 20th century in the United States.
China’s canning industry started late. In the late Qing Dynasty, with the opening of the country, canned food and its production process began to enter China.
In 1893, the patriots of the time, in Guangzhou, invested in the establishment of China’s first canned goods factory – Guangmao Xiang canned goods factory. China’s canning industry also began with the first product produced by Guangmaoxiang – black bean pangasius.
Subsequently, the coastal Tianjin, Xiamen, Ningbo, Shantou, Yantai, Dalian and the mainland of Chongqing, Chengdu, Wanxian and other places have also established a number of canned food factories.
At the beginning of the Republic, China’s canned food manufacturing industry had seven centers in Guangzhou, Shantou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou and Yangzhou, with products covering several categories of fruits and vegetables, poultry, fish, candy, cookies and sauces.
According to the “Guangzhou City Magazine”, before the outbreak of the war in 1937, Guangzhou already had 14 canning factories with an unprecedented annual output of more than 3,000 tons, and 90% of them were sold to the South Seas and America.
Poster of Meilin Canned Food Company
Image source: Meilin
The “old Chinese brand”, Meilin, was also established in that era. Compared to the exports of Guangzhou and Chaoshan, the canning factory in Shanghai “produced to save the country”, more national self-help meaning.
In order to resist imports and develop China’s canning industry, in July 1930, Shi Yongxi, Dai Xingshui and other savings and loans to banks, the official establishment of Meilin Canned Food Factory.
Meilin use of local raw materials, local production, compared with foreign goods at low prices, loved by consumers. While expanding the local market, Meilin also actively went global.
At the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair in the United States, Merlin canned foods received the “General Assembly Appreciation” evaluation and the “Successful Cooperation” certificate. Then it was exported to Southeast Asia and entered the European and American markets after the 1940s.
After the founding of the country, the domestic canning industry ushered in a period of rapid development.
In 1956, the state prepared for the construction of the Guangdong Canning Factory, which was completed and put into operation in 1958, and the factory was built in accordance with the Soviet architectural model of office buildings and plants. Guangdong canning plant is one of the 165 key projects of the Soviet Union and China’s economic cooperation, but also the largest canning plant during the first five-year plan of the new China, but also the largest canning plant in Asia at the time.
Data show that in 1959 China’s total output of canned goods was 160,000 tons, more than half of which was for export, involving more than a dozen varieties of pigs, cattle and sheep, poultry, fruits, vegetables, etc. In the early 1970s, the number of canned goods exported exceeded $100 million.
In the era of material shortages, canned goods were a luxury. In the early 1990s, sales of canned goods in the domestic market reached a small peak. People used canned meat as a New Year’s gift and canned fruit as a sympathy gift for visiting the sick.
03 Canning industry was “awakened”
It can be said that canned goods have played a colorful role in Chinese business history.
In the early 1990s, Mou Zhin, formerly China’s richest man, used light industrial products, including 500 carloads of canned goods, to buy back four Tu-154 airliners from the Soviet Union, becoming a legend in the Chinese business community and witnessing the high point of Chinese canning in international trade.
The production of canned food has two key features: sealing and sterilization.
From the point of view of production technology, in front of many contemporary foods, canned without technology and ruthless work. It can even be said that canned food is almost no additives and best able to maintain the original flavor of food products.
According to statistics, China’s canned goods production continued to increase from 2012 to 2016, reaching an industry peak of 13,948,600 tons of production in 2016, with revenue of 175,179 million yuan and total profits approaching 10 billion yuan.
However, since then, the development of the canning industry has entered a bottleneck, both in terms of production, and growth rate, and the overall trend in revenue has continued to decline. In 2019, the total revenue of Chinese canning enterprises was above size by about 128.21 billion yuan, with a total profit of 7.87 billion yuan.
China is a large producer of canned goods, supplying a quarter of the world’s canned goods, but is not a large consumer of canned goods. However, the domestic canned goods market has a lot of room for development, and some data show that by 2023, China’s canned goods industry market capacity is expected to exceed 320 billion yuan.
The problem with canned food is high salt, high sugar, and high oil. With the popularity of health awareness, consumers prefer fresh and short-preserved food, and coupled with the impact of take-out, the development of canned food is limited.
These years under the influence of the epidemic, consumers began to stock up. Long shelf life, a wide variety of canned food has become the choice of most people. Wisdom Research Consulting data show that in the first half of 2021, China’s canned food production increased by 11.8% year-on-year, which is also the first time in 2017 that growth.
This time, canned yellow peaches out of the circle is a revival of consumers’ childhood feelings, but a closer look at the canned goods industry behind it is undergoing change.
In particular, this year, the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration (National Standardization Administration) approved the release of “beef, canned lamb quality general rules” “tomato paste quality general rules” “canned pangasius fish quality general rules” three national standards in the field of canning revision; China Canning Industry Association released “China’s canning industry branding three-year special action plan (2021-2023)”, which are for China’s canning industry pointed out the direction.
Supply chain end, the leading enterprises continue to mechanization, automation, intelligence, the formation of a complete industrial system; small and medium-sized canned food factories also towards the development of specialized, large-scale canning enterprises.
In addition, under the consumer iteration, the new needs of new people were discovered. Four happy pills, plum vegetable buckle meat, eight treasure rice, etc., healthier, more diverse, more in line with the current taste of young people’s food is packed into the cans.
Li ZiQi canned ginseng and black bone chicken soup
Image source: Taobao @LiZiQi flagship store
For example, Lin Jia Pu Zi launched “sugar-free” “sugar control zero fat” canned yellow peaches; Meilin launched a “one person food” canned series; Li Zi Qi launched a ginseng chicken soup suitable for late-night overtime workers, travelers, and so on. The new brand that understands young people better has stepped on the wind of pre-made dishes and has also responded to the single economy.
Coupled with the general background of kitchen simplicity, fashion, and outdoor sports, the canning industry has simultaneously ushered in historical opportunities in different consumer scenarios.
Guangdong’s black bean pangasius, Beidaihe’s braised pork, Zhoushan’s drunken mud snails, Yunnan’s cloud legs, Hainan’s Qingtanliang, Xinjiang’s tomatoes, and grapes …… Canned food spans the mountains and seas and the seasons.
Humans have changed the shape of food, and the food industry is changing the eating habits of humans. Thought to “disappear” of the can, in a new way reappeared in front of the consumer.
from TideSight
Writer: Dundun Wong
Editor: Zisu