CJ Freshway Launches Integrated R&D Center: "Customized Product Development"

Integration of R&D Specialized Personnel and Establishment of Hub Infrastructure Focused on Strategic Products

CJ Freshway announced on the 27th that it has launched a research and development (R&D) center that consolidates specialized personnel and infrastructure for product development.

The R&D center is a newly established institute that integrates experts from various fields such as product development, menu planning, and manufacturing from CJ Freshway and its manufacturing subsidiary, Fresh Plus. The facility, composed of laboratories, quality analysis rooms, and product demonstration spaces, plans to lead the development of high value-added products that balance quality stability and price competitiveness.

The R&D center will serve as the forward base for CJ Freshway’s core Meal Solution strategy. In recent years, CJ Freshway has observed an increasing demand for specialized products tailored to individual customers, such as pre-processed ingredients and special sauces that enhance cooking efficiency, instead of standardized products. Since 2021, the company has continuously pursued the Meal Solution strategy by expanding customized ingredient products for customers.

The newly established R&D center is expected to become a key infrastructure that strengthens the development capabilities of customized products reflecting customers’ business characteristics and accelerates the Meal Solution strategy.

Customer-tailored products developed through CJ Freshway’s R&D center include ▲pre-processed ingredients ▲semi- and fully-cooked products ▲meal kits for catering ▲exclusive sauces, which will be launched through lifecycle-specialized food distribution brands such as 'Itswell', 'Ainuri' (infants and toddlers), 'Ttuntun School' (youth), and 'Healthy Nuri' (middle-aged and older adults). Additionally, differentiated product planning such as franchise-exclusive ingredients and IP content collaboration products will be pursued in various directions.

The new research institute is characterized by maximizing customer-tailored product planning capabilities by integrating consulting elements into existing R&D capabilities. To this end, CJ Freshway has divided the institute’s organization into the Menu R&D part and the Manufacturing R&D part. The Menu part plans menus, ingredients, and recipes reflecting the brand concepts of dining-out clients or the business characteristics of catering clients, while the Manufacturing part provides technical solutions such as product specification setting, sensory testing, and manufacturing process review, creating synergy through this operation method.

Jung Sung-pil, CEO of CJ Freshway, said, "The strength of the R&D center lies in its differentiated competitiveness by adding the capability as a solution provider that helps customer success to the traditional research institute model. We will devote all efforts to strengthening capabilities so that it becomes the foundation for securing CJ Freshway’s future competitiveness and a main driver leading trends in the ingredient distribution industry."

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