What new opportunities are still hidden in the freeze-dried food sector?

In the past few years, although there are many new consumer brands in the market to earn enough eyeballs, but there are still many products because they do not have a strong user demand base, the so-called "brand awareness" can not be converted into continuous re-purchase loyalty, and more access to only early adopters of experiential consumption, in the face of many homogenized products, consumers are increasingly unable to interest.

Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, said in his book Marketing Management that needs cannot be created, they can only be found. If niche consumers want to break the circle of mass consumption and re-provoke consumers' desire to buy, they must carry out a deep transformation of products.
In the food and beverage industry, technological innovation is the barrier, but also the most direct way to establish a new category, looking back at the global food industry history, it is not difficult to find that those can be recorded in the history of the "explosive products of The Times", always from the breakthrough and application of a scientific and technological achievement.

Nowadays, we also see that more and more consumer brands have begun to focus their differentiated attention on the "technology" itself, and scientific and technological breakthroughs represented by gene editing, purification and separation, modified synthesis, directed fermentation, freeze-drying, etc., are making the "production end" of consumer goods more and more possibilities.

In the face of the new coronavirus epidemic, a series of freeze-dried food has become a "new favorite" of consumption, such as freeze-dried fruits, freeze-dried vegetables, freeze-dried coffee and so on. According to Tmall data, sales of freeze-dried food increased by 300% in the three years from 2019 to 2021.

According to the "China Freeze-dried food Industry Market Demand and investment planning Analysis Report" released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, the size of China's freeze-dried food market in 2019 is about 1.8 billion yuan, and it is conservatively estimated that the next five years, China's freeze-dried food market will maintain an average compound growth rate of 15%, and the market size will exceed 4.2 billion yuan by 2025.

Freeze-drying technology, black technology to preserve the color, flavor and shape of the ingredients

Tear the delicate small package, take out a grain of colorful freeze-dried fruit, put into the mouth, taste crisp and sweet, freeze-dried food like this, more and more popular with young people.
What is freeze-dried food? Freeze-dried food is short for vacuum freeze-dried food, also known as FD (Freeze Dried) food.

Freeze-drying techniques can be traced back to the application of indigenous peoples in South America. Potatoes and other tubers grown in the lowlands will be transported to higher elevations, pressed to remove the liquid, and then cryogenized overnight. Thus, this created a sustainably stored food called chuno, which could be used as emergency rations.

It was not until the 1890s that freeze-drying technology really entered the industrial process. Richard Altmann developed a freeze-drying process that was not widely noticed until the late 1920s and 1930s.

It was at this time that Tival and Elser patented the freeze-drying system, which had been improved after Shackell's invention of the vacuum chamber in 1909, and further developed by Nestle in 1938, and in the 1950s and 1960s, as consumer demand changed, Freeze drying technology began to be applied in medicine, aerospace, food and other fields.

Unlike frying or baking and spray drying when making powder, freeze-drying is the principle of placing frozen food in a vacuum to sublimate, dehydrating the food. Simply put, freeze-drying is actually a process of sublimation of frozen products. Sublimation occurs when a frozen liquid begins to transform into a gas. The whole freeze-drying process mainly includes three stages: pre-freezing, quick-freezing and vacuum drying.

Food freeze-drying is to quickly freeze fresh food such as vegetables, meat, fruits, etc., in advance, and in the vacuum state, the water in the food is sublimed from solid to gas, and then analytical drying to remove part of the combined water, so as to achieve low temperature dehydration and drying.

Due to the special process of freeze-drying, it can maximize the color, flavor, shape and nutrition of the original fresh food, and can be stored at room temperature for more than 5 years without preservatives. At the same time, due to its pint in addition to most of the water, with light weight, easy to carry and transport advantages, can be directly eaten, can also be slightly processed, within a few minutes will be restored to fresh food, can be said to be the black technology in the food industry.

In fact, freeze-dried food has been quite popular in some developed countries, in Japan, the United States and Europe and other developed countries, has been vigorously promoted and popularized, processing technology and marketing gradually mature. In addition to home and restaurant, the technology is also widely used in mountaineering, travel, scientific research, munitions and other industries, its advantages and characteristics have been fully played.

Relevant data show that freeze-dried food in the United States is developing fastest, and freeze-dried food accounts for 40% to 50% of convenience foods in the United States. Currently, the United States consumes 6 million tons of freeze-dried food per year, Japan 2 million tons, France 1.6 million tons, and other countries have significant numbers.

Domestic development is rapid, freeze-dried food industry into a new growth point

In China, freeze-dried food started late, and the market acceptance was low due to the high cost and price in the early stage. However, in recent years, with the improvement of people's living standards, the acceleration of the pace of life and the diversification of choices, freeze-dried food processing enterprises have increased production and research and development efforts in China, so that freeze-dried food has gradually entered the life of ordinary people.

China's freeze-dried food is mainly divided into fruits, vegetables, convenience foods and meat and aquatic products, of which fruits and vegetables are mainly. Fruits accounted for about 40% of freeze-dried food in China, and vegetables accounted for about 20%.
The rise of the freeze-dried food market has attracted manufacturers from different fields to enter the market, and now more and more snack food enterprises have joined the ranks of freeze-dried food research and development and investment, producing freeze-dried food, snack food, soup drinks, and even pet food, which meet the domestic market demand and suit the tastes and consumption habits of Chinese people, greatly enriching and expanding the market of freeze-dried food in China.

All new developments merely repeat and amplify what has already happened. Anthony Galluzzo, in his popular book Making Consumers, has a new definition of the relationship between goods, consumption, and people, and has implications for how business organizations allow the masses to "invent" their own identities through consumption.

The original technology through careful consideration, adaptation, upgrade, used in new products and categories, and to achieve industrial production, which is a larger wave of opportunities for consumer products to reshape.

For example, freeze-drying technology, which was originally applied in other industries, has been popularized to new industries and fields, and has been optimized and adjusted in the popularization process, thereby bringing about the upgrading of products and experiences in these new industries, such as better taste reduction, more convenient use, and in line with the current global food development trend of "green food", "convenience food" and "health food".

In the future, freeze-drying technology still has many scenarios and applications worth exploring.