Face the Grassroots, Serve the Industry

The China Food & Drinks Fair sincerely advertises for the Solutions of Mechanized Removal of Fiber and Skin of Preserved and Pickled Vegetables

The 97th China Food and Drinks Fair (CFDF) will be held at the Chongqing International Expo Center on November 10-12, 2017.

Through the thorough investigations in western China market, the market research team of FMPM zone (International Food Machinery and Packaging Machinery Exhibition Zone) learned that with the acceleration of urbanization and the transfer of rural surplus labor to non-agricultural industries in China, labor costs continue to increase. Hence the deep-processing industry for vegetable products urgently needs to develop mechanized production to improve labor productivity.

Fuling District of Chongqing Municipality is an important producing area of preserved vegetables in China. As to the preserved vegetables industry, Fuling reached the gross output value of RMB 8.5 billion in 2016, and it is expected to achieve RMB 10 billion in gross output value and RMB 2 billion in industry profit and tax in 2020, as well as RMB 13 billion and RMB 2.5 billion respectively in 2025.

Meishan City of Sichuan Province is a major producing area of pickled vegetables. In 2014, the sales revenue of food industry in Meishan was up to RMB 47.2 billion, among which that of pickled vegetables reached RMB 12.2 billion. In 2015, the output of pickled vegetables in Sichuan was 3.3 million tons, accounting for about 70% of the output nationwide; the output value across the province was up to RMB 27 billion, among which the sales revenue of RMB 13.6 billion was contributed by Meishan’s pickled vegetables.

It is known that the production processes of preserved vegetables mainly include fiber and skin removing, cleaning, slicing, dewatering, desalting, seasoning, pickling, weighing, bagging, sterilizing, cooling, etc. In the process of fiber and skin removing, it is required to remove the crude fiber on the surface of stem mustard, which grows at the root of stem mustard and extends to the cortex of the first layer of knob. The crude fiber of stem mustard has greater capacity to bear longitudinal pulling force than the flesh of stem mustard, so the fiber and skin are always separated from the flesh of stem mustard by tearing off the skin, thus removing the crude fiber. But the existing technology is unable to separate the fiber and skin from the flesh of steam mustard completely.

In June 2017, the market research team of CFDF, FMPM zone conducted thorough investigations in many Sichuan- and Chongqing-based leading preserved and pickled vegetables manufacturers, including Chengdu Wenjiang Industrial Park, Shuangliu Industrial Park, Meishan (Hometown of Pickled Vegetables), Pixian County (Sichuan Cuisine Industrial Zone) and Chongqing Lidu Industrial Park, looked into the development trend of the industry, learned about the current state and trend of food factories, further discussed the upgrading requirements proposed by the factories through the platform of CFDF, including R&D, technology, production, package and integration, and finally put the discussion results into practices.

Through many times of field researches, it has been learned that the fiber and skin removing technology for preserved vegetables remains the most difficult technical problem for the leading brands in the preserved and pickled vegetables industry, like Chuannan Brewing, Jixiangju, Weijute, Liji, Wujiang, and Yuquan. It is also an urgent technical problem that needs to be tackled for the whole industry.

The main difficulty is that the fiber and skin removing work at the very beginning has always been dependent on manual work. A worker could handle 800-1,000 kilograms of steam mustard in 10 hours per day; most workers are middle-aged and elderly people, and it’s difficult to recruit young people because of the high labor intensity. 

According to incomplete statistics, every factory has 100-500 workers in average engaged in the work of removing fiber and skin. The corresponding uncertain factors, such as high labor cost, labor shortage, weak stability and low work efficiency, have become the obstacles restricting the development of enterprises and industry. Since 2013, the industry representatives have repeatedly sought help and recommendations from our FMPM, with hope to find professional research institutes and supplier partners who can carry out research and development, discussion, experiment and collaboration together to find out a solution for mechanized removal of fiber and skin of preserved and pickled vegetables. In doing so, the pain spot of the industry can be eliminated and the mechanized removal of fiber and skin can be realized.

Entrusted by the above leading enterprises of preserved and pickled vegetables industry, the platform of CFDF calls on preserved vegetables, pickled vegetables, fruits and vegetables mechanized and automatic processing equipment experts and industry research experts to jointly discuss solutions for mechanized removal of fiber and skin of preserved and pickled vegetables and conquer the technical difficulties of the industry.

In addition, the preserved and pickled vegetables manufacturers are also interested in the back-end automatic equipment and technology applied for measuring, bagging and casing.

If you are willing to cooperate with us, please contact:

Organizing Committee of the CFDF: 

Mr. Ding   Tel: 010-88364697   Email: 233358643@qq.com

Mr. Li        Tel: 010-68317174   Email: 1368223861@qq.com

International Machinery Area:

Ms. Zhao   Tel: 021-60908291   Email: niko.zhao@masterexpo.cn