Increased Interest in Ready Meals and Health Supplements Due to COVID-19... Food Industry Production Performance Up 10.5%

2021 Domestic Food Industry Production Performance 93.158 Trillion KRW
Health Functional Food Production Performance Increased by 19.8%

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Young-won] Last year, the production performance of the food industry increased by about 10.5% compared to 2020. This appears to be influenced by COVID-19 and a culture that emphasizes health.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and the Food Safety Information Service announced on the 25th that the domestic food industry production performance in 2021 was 93.158 trillion KRW, an increase of about 9 trillion KRW from the previous year (84.3267 trillion KRW). This accounted for 4.5% of the domestic gross domestic product (GDP) and 17.8% of the total domestic manufacturing production.

The production performance growth rate of the food industry during this period was 10.5%, more than twice the recent 5-year average annual growth rate (3.6%). Production performance has steadily increased since 2019.

The ranking of production performance by food category remained the same as in 2020. Packaged pork accounted for the largest production scale at 8.6% of the total. The production amount was 7.4016 trillion KRW. From 2nd to 5th place were packaged beef, seasoned meat, ready-to-eat and convenience foods, and sauces.

Production performance increased across all business sectors. Food manufacturing and food additives, which account for 57% of food production performance, recorded 53.1155 trillion KRW, a 9.7% increase from the previous year. The production performance of the health functional food manufacturing industry rose by 19.8% compared to the previous year.

This rise in food industry performance appears to reflect social changes emphasizing health and the impact of COVID-19.

First, the production performance of home meal replacements (HMR) increased by 16.8% from the previous year to 3.9097 trillion KRW. In particular, the production performance of the newly introduced 'simple cooking sets (meal kits)' in October 2020 surged from 1.3 billion KRW to 54.8 billion KRW, an increase of about 4000%. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety sees this as reflecting consumer trends influenced by reduced dining out and increased demand for home-cooked meals due to COVID-19.

During the pandemic, increased food delivery due to reduced social activities appears to have influenced the rise in production of polypropylene packaging materials. Last year, production performance of containers and packaging reached 6.6716 trillion KRW, increasing about 11.9 percentage points more than the recent 5-year average annual growth rate.

Along with COVID-19, continued high interest in health has significantly boosted the production performance of health functional foods. Last year, production performance of health functional foods increased by 19.8% from the previous year to 2.712 trillion KRW. The most produced product was 'Red Ginseng products,' accounting for 22.7% of all health functional foods. Due to high interest in joint health, production of 'Boswellia extract' increased nearly 2991% compared to the previous year. Another ingredient beneficial for joints and cartilage, 'MSM,' also saw production rise by 107% from the previous year, reaching 59.9 billion KRW.

There were a total of six manufacturers with production performance exceeding 1 trillion KRW. Five were food manufacturing and processing companies, and one was a livestock product processing company. This is an increase of one company (Ottogi) from five companies the previous year.

CJ CheilJedang ranked first again in 2020, and Lotte Chilsung Beverage, which was fourth the previous year, ranked second. Nongshim was third, Hite Jinro fourth, Ottogi fifth, and Seoul Milk Cooperative sixth.

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