Amid Tart Cherry Popularity, Last Year's Fruit and Vegetable Processed Product Imports Increased... Beer Ranked 3rd

MFDS Analyzes Status of Imported Processed Foods

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chun-han] As consumers' interest in health grows, imports of fruit and vegetable concentrates made from raw materials such as tart cherry, pomegranate, and carrot significantly increased last year.

On the 14th, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety analyzed the performance of processed foods imported into Korea based on provisional data from the Import Food Integrated System. The most imported processed foods last year were fruit and vegetable processed products.

Excluding refined and processed food raw materials, the import volume of fruit and vegetable processed products increased by about 2.1%, from 275,424 tons (t) in 2019 to 281,222t last year. In fact, the import volume related to tart cherry rose dramatically from 3t in 2019 to 3,349t in 2020, a 106-fold increase.

The 2nd and 3rd most imported processed foods were kimchi and beer, respectively. Imported kimchi steadily increased by an average of 5.5% annually over the past three years from 2017 to 2019, but last year it decreased by 8.3% to 281,021t. However, its import performance maintained 2nd place, the same as in 2019.

Beer, which ranked first in import performance in 2019, dropped two places to 3rd last year. Notably, beer import volume decreased significantly from 362,027t to 279,635t.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety explained that coffee imports, including beverages and prepared coffee, were at similar levels in 2019 and 2020, but domestic production was 34 times greater than import volume.

The Ministry stated, "Through various trend analyses of imported foods, we will strengthen inspections of items with increasing imports and provide safety information, while doing our best to manage safety by promptly responding to domestic and international hazard information."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.