I. What Is Easily Overlooked: Two National-Scale Snack Giants Are Both Based Here

When people think of Anhui's food sector, the instinct is to default to "agricultural province, basic processing." That picture is only half right. Anhui is indeed a major producer of grain, oilseeds, and fruit — but its food manufacturing doesn't stop at primary processing. The province is home to two nationally prominent listed snack companies: Chacha Food (Hefei, A-share main board) and Three Squirrels (Wuhu, ChiNext). One built its business on roasted seeds and scaled into a global export chain; the other rode e-commerce traffic to reach near-hundred-billion-yuan sales. Both are headquartered in Anhui, both focus on nuts and roasted snacks, yet the paths they took diverge sharply.

Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute examines Anhui food manufacturing because a province's food industry merits a closer look when it has developed real industrial logic — not just raw volume. In nut snacks, canned fruit, and botanical food, Anhui has accumulated enough depth in each lane to tell a distinct story.

II. Chacha Food: From Hefei, Turning Sunflower Seeds into a Global Export Chain

Chacha Food's starting point was a sunflower seed roasting line in Hefei in the early 2000s. It built its national presence through the "洽洽" brand, pushing into supermarkets across China with factory-scale roasting and wide-channel distribution. After two decades on that foundation, it had accumulated a solid retail network in seeds and used it as a launchpad for a second growth curve in nuts.

According to Chacha Food's 2023 annual report, the company recorded total revenue of approximately RMB 6.8 billion: sunflower seed products contributed roughly RMB 4.3 billion, and nut products roughly RMB 1.8 billion. Revenue declined slightly that year, with raw material cost pressure — sunflower seed prices rose, compressing processing margins — as the direct driver. Despite that, the company's production footprint did not contract: it operates over ten manufacturing sites across Hefei, Harbin, Baotou, Chongqing, Changsha, Chuzhou, Fuyang, and Thailand.

The export dimension is where Chacha has separated itself from domestic peers. Its products reach nearly fifty countries and regions, with Southeast Asia as the overseas hub and coverage extending to the US, Canada, and parts of Europe. Sustaining brand recognition in Southeast Asia requires sustained local investment — not simply relabeling for export. Chacha's decision to build a production base in Thailand reflects that longer-term localization strategy.

III. Three Squirrels: After the E-Commerce Phase, a Wuhu Factory Is Where It Really Took Root

Three Squirrels grew without a factory. It leveraged Taobao and Tmall traffic to build nut snacks into a major internet category — Wuhu-headquartered, but functionally closer to a "nut aggregator" than a manufacturer, sourcing from upstream suppliers, selling on platforms, and capturing value through selection and traffic rather than its own processing.

That model ran into a ceiling as e-commerce growth decelerated. In 2023, Three Squirrels posted revenue of approximately RMB 7.1 billion, down slightly year-on-year; the nut category accounted for roughly RMB 3.8 billion. Net profit reached approximately RMB 220 million, up sharply — a sign that cost discipline was working, even if the revenue plateau remained.

The meaningful shift in Three Squirrels' relationship with Anhui's industrial base came with the Wuhu demonstration factory, which went into production in August 2022. Six production lines with a peak daily output of approximately 45,000 boxes of mixed nuts and an annual capacity of 12,000 tonnes. Moving from brand company to manufacturer is a structural change: without control over the processing step, there is no real lever for quality differentiation or cost structure improvement in a commoditized category.

IV. Dangshan: From Pear-Growing County to "World Pear Capital," Canned Fruit Anchors an Export Chain

If Chacha and Three Squirrels represent Anhui's branded food path, Dangshan represents a different model: building a processing cluster around a dominant raw material position.

Dangshan County sits at Anhui's northernmost tip, at the junction of Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan, and Anhui provinces. It is the country's largest production base for "suyli" pears. Total pear cultivation area exceeds 400,000 mu, with roughly 250,000 mu in suyli varieties and more than 60,000 centenarian trees still standing. Raw volume alone doesn't build an industry — the real logic lies in processing.

As of end-2023, Dangshan had 75 above-scale fruit processing enterprises, with annual processing capacity of approximately 1.2 million tonnes. Output value from pear cans, yellow peach cans, mixed fruit cans, and pear syrup totaled RMB 12 billion annually; full-chain industry value reached approximately RMB 14.3 billion (source: Dangshan County People's Government; Suzhou Municipal Statistics Bureau). On the export side, the county ships over 450,000 tonnes of canned fruit and juice annually, generating over RMB 3 billion in sales, to markets including Japan, the US, Canada, and the EU. Concentrated pear clear juice and pear pulp are its other major export products — according to media reports, Dangshan accounts for approximately 20% of global supply in this category, with Nestlé and PepsiCo among its long-term buyers (source: Securities Times; Xinhua).

The reason Dangshan can sustain this scale is straightforward: no other pear-producing region of comparable size exists within several hundred kilometers. That raw material positioning confers irreplaceable leverage on both cost and provenance.

V. Bozhou: The Extension of China's Herb Capital into Botanical Food

Bozhou's industrial identity is traditional Chinese medicine — it hosts the country's largest traditional medicine trading market, and its modern TCM industry exceeds RMB 200 billion in scale. Over the past two decades, this base has generated a food-sector extension, with herbal tea and botanical solid beverages as the clearest product category.

Bozhou's herbal tea growth runs through the "food-medicine dual-use" regulatory framework. Botanicals like chrysanthemum, rose, honeysuckle, and cassia seed occupy a space between food and pharmaceutical classification; within the food regulatory perimeter, this has allowed Bozhou enterprises to develop a wide range of wellness-positioned products. The cluster now encompasses more than 1,000 enterprises, with herbal tea and related solid beverages generating combined output approaching RMB 10 billion annually — products distributed heavily through Taobao, Douyin, and livestreaming platforms (source: Sina Finance; The Paper).

Unlike Dangshan's export-driven model, Bozhou's botanical food industry runs on domestic livestreaming commerce. Raw materials are sourced locally or from nearby trading hubs; processing is centered on blending and packaging rather than deep transformation. It is a low-barrier, brand-crowded lane — but in the early phase of traffic-driven growth, it enabled many small factories to scale quickly.

Within the Luan region, Huoshan County has taken a different, higher-end botanical path through stone orchid (shi hu). Huoshan's "mi hu" variety dominates this niche. With over 20,000 mu under cultivation, the county's TCM industry total output reportedly surpassed RMB 9.5 billion in 2025, with stone orchid contributing around RMB 8 billion (source: Huoshan County People's Government). Products now range from fresh stems and dried strips to oral liquids and meal-replacement powders, moving toward functional food positioning.

VI. Supply Chain Structure: Raw Material Strength, Processing Gaps

Anhui food manufacturing's upstream advantage is its agricultural base. The province ranks consistently among the top ten nationally in grain output, with meaningful production in oilseed rape, wheat, and rice; specialty raw materials — Dangshan pears and peaches, Huoshan stone orchid, Bozhou herbs — provide differentiated inputs that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

In mid-stream processing, the pattern is "strong anchors, thin cluster." Chacha and Three Squirrels give Anhui genuine national-scale presence, but their supply chains are partly external — sunflower seed raw materials come primarily from Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, and imported nuts dominate in the nut snack category. Dangshan's canned fruit cluster is the rare case where raw material origin and processing both sit in the same county, but its brand presence remains limited; much of its output moves as contract manufacturing or unlabeled bulk export.

Downstream logistics benefit from Anhui's proximity to the Yangtze River Delta. Transit times from Wuhu, Hefei, and Chuzhou to Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou are measured in hours. Cold chain infrastructure is improving, giving perishable food products viable rapid-distribution access to China's largest consumer markets.

VII. Structural Pressures the Industry Faces

Three structural pressures stand out.

First, raw material cost volatility. Chacha's 2023 revenue and profit both declined due directly to sunflower seed price increases. Food companies with agricultural inputs as their primary cost driver have limited pricing power; absorbing commodity price swings without passing them to consumers is a persistent margin challenge.

Second, the tension between branded product and contract manufacturing. Dangshan's export chain runs on volume and price. As global food trade conditions grow more complex, pure cost competition narrows. In Bozhou's herbal tea sector, brand differentiation is even more difficult — among more than a thousand enterprises, those with independently recognizable brands remain a small fraction.

Third, consumer demand is shifting structurally. Younger buyers are increasingly oriented toward "healthy," "low-calorie," and "functional" positioning. Growth ceilings for traditional roasted snacks are visible. Chacha is actively looking for a third growth curve; Three Squirrels is investing in offline channels and factory capabilities. These moves reflect an industry-wide challenge that runs deeper than any single company's strategy.

For sales teams supplying food ingredient, packaging, equipment, or channel services to Anhui food manufacturers, Tianxia Gongchang provides a directory of food manufacturing factories in Anhui Province, filterable by region and product subcategory, with access to key decision-maker contacts.

Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Anhui food manufacturing factory directory and industry data)
  • Chacha Food Co., Ltd. 2023 Annual Report (CSRC disclosure platform)
  • Three Squirrels Co., Ltd. 2023 Annual Report; Wuhu Municipal Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau
  • Dangshan County People's Government official website; Suzhou Municipal Statistics Bureau
  • Xinhua News Agency, Securities Times: "Dangshan: The Making of the World Pear Capital" (2024)
  • Sina Finance: "Bozhou Herbal Tea Brews a Hundred-Billion Industry" (2024)
  • Huoshan County People's Government; Jiemian News: "Huoshan Grows a Hundred-Billion Medicinal Plant Industry" (2025)