How can the booming pre-prepared food industry capture consumers' hearts through packaging?
According to the "2022 China Pre-prepared Food Industry Development Trend Research Report" released by iiMedia Research, the Chinese pre-prepared food market size was 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, and is expected to exceed 516.5 billion yuan in 2023, surpassing one trillion yuan by 2026.
In the future, "time-saving and worry-free" pre-prepared meals are expected to take over more and more consumers' meals. The overwhelmingly positive reviews such as "a dish in 8 minutes," "a must-have for home cooking," and "from novice to chef" indirectly affirm the public's recognition and love for pre-prepared foods.
Focusing on factors such as the pandemic, the continued boom in pre-prepared food is a foregone conclusion. Not only are fresh food e-commerce platforms like Hema Fresh, Meituan Maicai, and Dingdong Maicai increasing their investment in this field, but established and emerging ready-to-eat meal brands such as Xinya Chef, Guangzhou Restaurant, and Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan are also entering the market with great effort, undoubtedly adding fuel to the fire of ready-to-eat meals' "homely charm."
Prepared Food Vacuum Pouch Film
Ready to Cook Vacuum Bag Film
BOPA for Prepared Meal
Capturing Consumers' "Stomachs" with Deliciousness and Experience
Like home-cooked meals, ready-to-eat meals are prone to bacterial growth when exposed to air, leading to discoloration, spoilage, and even decay. Improper packaging and storage of ready-to-eat meals can affect their taste and freshness. Therefore, it is necessary to use special packaging technologies to effectively extend the shelf life of ready-to-eat meals, allowing them to maintain their fresh taste and quality for a longer period.
Ready-to-eat meals on the market can be broadly divided into four categories: ready-to-eat foods, ready-to-heat foods, ready-to-cook foods, and ready-to-prepare foods. How can they be packaged to leverage their unique advantages and firmly capture consumers' "stomachs"?
Ready-to-eat foods: Foods intended to be consumed directly after opening.
Frozen Meal BOPA Packaging
BOPA for Prepared Meal
Automatic Vacuum Packing Film
Ready to Cook Vacuum Bag Film
After cooking and sterilization, ready-to-eat foods require vacuum packaging or modified atmosphere packaging. Using ordinary packaging materials may not meet oxygen barrier requirements, easily leading to discoloration, mold, and spoilage due to prolonged exposure to air. This significantly reduces flavor, texture, and freshness, impacting shelf life.
Shuanghui's series of low-temperature meat products use a top-and-bottom film structure. The top film uses Changsu Vector Film® EHA Fresh-Locking Type composite with other substrates, providing excellent oxygen barrier properties.
Furthermore, because the selected Changsu Vector Film® EHA Fresh-Locking Type is a high-performance BOPA film material, the top film also possesses the excellent mechanical properties of BOPA, such as abrasion resistance and tensile strength, protecting the product from breakage during transportation.
Meanwhile, as can be seen from the case images, the printed patterns on this packaging material are exquisite and brightly colored, making it very eye-catching. As one of the solutions for improving the barrier properties of ready-to-eat food packaging, it performs exceptionally well.
Instant-heat food: Food that can be eaten immediately after heating.
The "tear open the bag and you have a bowl" concept of cooking bags has undoubtedly captured the hearts of many instant-heat food enthusiasts. However, in practice, it's easy to end up with a "broken bowl"—a shaky hand can instantly dampen the excitement. The difference between the buyer's show and the seller's show is significant. This microwave-safe venting bag uses the Changsu Vector Film® TSA tear-off type, which doesn't damage the packaging material's structure and requires no other special materials. A simple tear creates a straight opening, preventing splashing and spillage. Furthermore, unlike laser perforation, which requires damaging the material to achieve a good tear-off effect, the Changsu Vector Film TSA tear-off type has a built-in "straight-tear effect" and superior performance, making the "bowl" more durable and sturdy, allowing the packaging to withstand the high temperatures of microwaves.
Frozen Meal BOPA Packaging
BOPA for Prepared Meal
Ready-to-cook foods: Semi-finished ingredients that need to be cooked in a pot.
Semi-finished ingredients are mostly soups and noodles, with a lot of broth and sauce. When opening the bag, it's easy to tear it crookedly, causing spills and splattering, which is too troublesome to clean up. This contradicts the original intention of consumers choosing ready-made meals, and often leads to consumers blacklisting the product because of a "one-time spill."
The solution is actually very simple: using Changsu Vector Film® TSA tear-off packaging material perfectly solves the problem! It allows for easy, straight tearing without the need for other special materials, effectively preventing broth and spills. Once used, it will definitely be on the list of favorite ready-made meal packaging.
Ready-to-prepare foods: Ingredients that have undergone preliminary processing such as washing and cutting. After fruits, vegetables, and meats are cut, washed, and disinfected, they must be aseptically packaged before being sold. However, vacuum-packed bone-in meat products are often easily punctured by bones or sharp objects, leading to problems such as broken bags, air leakage, and loss of freshness, causing the food to discolor, change flavor, and lose its texture. Therefore, ready-to-eat food packaging must be flexible and puncture-resistant.
Changpu Vector Film® EHA Freshness-Locking Type is not only abrasion-resistant and puncture-resistant, but also has excellent barrier properties. It effectively prevents problems such as bag breakage, air leakage, and loss of freshness caused by punctures from bones or sharp objects after vacuum sealing. It also firmly locks in freshness, preventing discoloration and flavor changes, ensuring a fresher, more authentic taste.
Ready to Cook Vacuum Bag Film
Prepared Food Vacuum Pouch Film
In this competitive landscape, ready-to-eat meals have developed a rich variety of categories and diverse flavors. With the consumer trend of "whoever wins over young people wins the market," the competition in the ready-to-eat meal market will intensify. Besides further standardizing production, increasing product categories, and creating more flavors that young people like, every small change will give newcomers an edge. Innovative products from some packaging companies may provide a boost to brands in the ready-to-eat meal market, better collaborating with them to innovate products and services and jointly explore the true needs of young people.