1. To Understand Fujian's Food Processing, Look First to the Sea

In most provinces, agricultural and sideline food processing is an industry that hugs the land: where wheat grows, flour is milled; where hogs are raised, slaughtering and cutting follow; where livestock is large, feed is made. The raw material is local, and so is the processing. That logic holds well for inland provinces, but applied to Fujian the centre of gravity must shift entirely.

Fujian is eight parts mountain, one part water and one part field, with limited plains for large-scale cultivation; land-based raw materials such as grain, oil and hogs are no advantage. But it has more than a thousand kilometres of mainland coastline, a vast sea area scattered with islands, and superb conditions for marine aquaculture and offshore and deep-sea fishing. So Fujian's food processing, from the very start, has revolved not around fields but around the ocean. Its core problem is not how to mill away a grain surplus, but how to take the nearly nine million tonnes of aquatic products caught and farmed from the sea each year and turn them, stably, freshly and with added value, into factory capacity.

In 2023 Fujian's total aquatic output reached about 8.90 million tonnes, up 3.3 percent year on year, of which marine aquaculture accounted for about 5.80 million tonnes, the larger share. Such a vast volume of live raw material must be caught by onshore processing capacity, or the fish loses value the moment it leaves the water and the seaweed spoils once ashore. It is precisely this pressure of raw material landing daily and needing immediate processing that has forced Fujian's food processing into a special form, with aquatic processing as its unambiguous lead. The Industry Research Institute treats it as a regional sample for exactly this reason: it and the land-based processing of grain provinces are two entirely different paths, one hugging the field, the other the sea. This report endorses no company's market performance; it only sets out the real structure of this blue processing belt.

2. Aquatic Processing: The Main Beam Holding Up the Industry

To weigh Fujian's agricultural and sideline food processing, first see how thick this main beam of aquatic processing is.

In 2024, Fujian's large-scale aquatic processing enterprises posted revenue of about RMB89.3 billion, total profit of about RMB5.9 billion and total processed output of about 3.98 million tonnes, with both surimi products and seaweed products ranking first nationally. A province sitting at the top of the country in two entirely different aquatic processing segments at once owes this not to a single hit product line, but to a whole set of farming, fishing, processing and cold-chain capabilities accumulated along the coast over decades.

In layout, Fujian's aquatic processing is not spread evenly but gathered into knots. The province has built three major processing clusters in eastern, central and southern Fujian, with products spanning canned aquatic goods, ready-to-eat food and marine biological products, and a processed-goods export share of over 36 percent. That export share shows Fujian's aquatic processing serves not only the province and the domestic market: a considerable part is made to export standards and sold overseas, and export standards in turn push up the whole of processing technique, hygiene norms and traceability systems.

Once this beam stands, the rest of Fujian's food processing, that is grain processing, vegetable oil, feed, and fruit, vegetable and livestock slaughtering, is more a routine support around local consumption, smaller in scale and recognition than aquatics. To understand this industry in Fujian is first to accept that its centre lies at sea, then to look at what each distinctive aquatic cluster is doing.

3. Fuzhou and Lianjiang: Turning a Fish Ball Into a Twenty-Billion Business

The most recognisable card in Fujian's aquatic processing is the Fuzhou fish ball, or more precisely the broad class of products made from surimi as a base.

Fuzhou is known as China's fish-ball capital, and Lianjiang as its hometown; locals say "for China's fish balls look to Fuzhou, for Fuzhou's look to Lianjiang." In 2022, Fuzhou's fish-ball, that is surimi, product output exceeded 200,000 tonnes, with output value reaching about RMB20 billion, and annual sales accounting for more than half of the national market. A coastal city reaching half the country in the single segment of surimi products rests on rich nearshore fish raw material, decades of refined pulping and forming technique, and a cluster of local makers specialising in filling and forming equipment.

What deserves more notice is that Fuzhou's fish balls are moving from street snack to factory capacity. Local fish-ball factories featuring intelligent, automated lines have been built, handing the once hand-dependent wrapping step to machines, with products sold to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. This means the surimi business has upgraded from a front-shop, back-workshop form into modern food processing that speaks of scale, standards and exports, and each rise in capacity and standard corresponds to higher demands on surimi raw material, preservation ingredients, forming equipment and cold chain.

4. Ningde Large Yellow Croaker: A Full Chain Grown From a Single Fish

If Fuzhou's fish ball is about processing technique, then Ningde is about how a single fish grows into a complete industrial chain.

Ningde is the country's largest base for artificial breeding, farming, processing, sales and export of large yellow croaker. In 2023, Ningde's croaker output reached about 212,000 tonnes, accounting for nearly 80 percent of the national total, while its full-chain output value exceeded RMB20 billion. For a prefecture-level city to hold up a chain worth over twenty billion on a single fish species is rare nationwide.

The completeness of this chain shows precisely in the depth of its processing link. The area has dozens of croaker processing enterprises and more than 40 processing lines, capable of producing chilled, frozen-strip, fresh-brined, semi-dried and salted varieties and dried croaker, across multiple series and nearly a hundred kinds. In other words, Ningde has not settled for selling live fish but, according to differing preservation and flavour needs, has split the same croaker into a whole row of processed products, from the most primary chilled frozen goods to higher-value ready-to-eat and seasoned items. This capacity to "use up every part of one fish" is the key that turned the croaker from a farmed species into an industrial sample. Its upstream demand thus extends from fish fry and feed to the full set of preservation, seasoning, packaging and cold-chain support.

5. Xiapu and Fuqing: A Seaweed Pole of Kelp and Laver, and the Full Eel Chain

The third face of Fujian's aquatic processing lies in two spots in eastern and central Fujian: Xiapu's kelp and laver, and Fuqing's eel.

Xiapu is known as China's hometown of kelp. In 2023, Xiapu's kelp output reached about 147,000 tonnes, nearly 90 percent of the prefecture's total, with farmed kelp covering about 300,000 mu of sea area and output value of about RMB4 billion; locally farmed laver exceeded 130,000 mu, with output value of over RMB1 billion. Large seaweeds like kelp and laver spoil readily once out of the water and almost must be dried, seasoned and packaged nearby, which is exactly the raw-material basis for Fujian's seaweed product output ranking first nationally. Xiapu has turned kelp from a farmed seaweed into a series of processed goods such as salted kelp, ready-to-eat kelp knots and seasoned laver, forming a distinctive pole of Fujian aquatic processing led by seaweed.

In Fuqing, the lead is eel. Here, represented by Tianma Technology, a full chain from fry, feed and farming to food processing has been built around eel, dubbed "China's Eel Valley." Its roasted-eel products among the eel foods are already sold to over 70 countries and regions across Europe, the Americas and Asia. Eel is a strongly export-oriented category, with high demands on farming standards, processing hygiene and cold-chain logistics, and bringing this chain to the scale of a listed company rests precisely on the long interlocking of the farming and processing ends. Xiapu's seaweed and Fuqing's eel, one leaning to primary preservation processing and the other to export deep processing, together widen the category spectrum of Fujian aquatic processing.

6. Leaders and Upstream: The Procurement System Seen Through Anjoy and Tianma

Gathering the clusters, the leadership structure of Fujian's aquatic processing comes clear: it is held not by one or two giants alone but by several blocks, each with its own leader and system.

The most emblematic is Anjoy Foods, headquartered in Xiamen and founded in December 2001. It is the country's largest frozen-food enterprise, with total revenue of about RMB12.183 billion in 2022, of which frozen surimi products are its largest segment, at about three-tenths of revenue. Anjoy's significance is in showing that Fujian's surimi processing can be made into a nationwide frozen-food leader and, on that core, laid out across multiple production bases nationally. Fuqing's Tianma Technology represents another path, twisting fry, feed, farming and roasted-eel processing into an export-oriented full chain around the single category of eel. A nationwide frozen-surimi leader and an export-oriented full-chain eel company, plus the respective processors of Ningde croaker and Xiapu kelp and laver, give Fujian aquatic processing a structure of "several blocks, each with its own leader, none betting on the other."

This structure also means its upstream procurement demand splits into several non-overlapping systems:

  • Aquatic raw material, fry and feed: surimi, croaker, eel and kelp and laver each correspond to different live raw materials, fry and dedicated feed, with demand concentrated and ever stricter on quality, specification and traceability;
  • Preservation, seasoning and food ingredients: from surimi forming ingredients, to croaker brining and salting, to seaweed seasoning and ready-to-eat goods, a steady buyer of various food additives, seasonings and preservation ingredients;
  • Packaging materials: tinplate and glass jars for canned aquatics, soft packaging for frozen goods, composite packaging for ready-to-eat seaweed and roasted eel, mixed in type and large in volume, an easily underrated niche;
  • Aquatic processing and freezing equipment: from fish-ball pulping and forming lines, to croaker cutting lines, to eel roasting lines and seaweed drying and seasoning equipment, spanning many process classes with rich equipment-procurement tiers;
  • Cold chain and storage facilities: frozen surimi, chilled croaker and export roasted eel carry continuous demand for cold storage, cold-chain transport and warehousing that grows in proportion to capacity.

For sales teams supplying these Fujian aquatic and agricultural and sideline food processors upstream, Tianxia Gongchang lets them filter the factory directory and decision-maker contacts precisely along the two dimensions of region and industry for Fujian agricultural and sideline food processing, turning door-by-door inquiry across Fuzhou, Ningde, Xiapu and Fuqing, and across surimi, croaker, seaweed and eel, into customer development by map.

7. The Institute's Assessment: The Raw Material Is in the Sea, the Contest Is at the Processing End

Putting the blocks together, Fujian's agricultural and sideline food processing shows a shape wholly unlike that of grain provinces: the raw material comes not from fields but from the sea, the main beam is not grain, oil and slaughtering but aquatic processing, and that beam is thick enough to sit first nationally in both surimi and seaweed at once. Fuzhou made surimi into a fish-ball capital holding half the country, Ningde made one croaker into a full chain worth over twenty billion, Xiapu made kelp and laver into a seaweed pole, and Fuqing made eel into an export-oriented full chain selling to over 70 countries, each with its own fish, technique and leader.

Its worries are written in the same word, the sea. Live aquatic raw material is heavily affected by farming cycles, sea conditions and disease, and its prices swing harder than land materials; export-heavy categories must face overseas technical trade barriers, exchange rates and shipping costs; clusters relying heavily on a single species, such as seaweed and eel, see the whole processing chain shake once the raw-material end falters.

The Industry Research Institute's view is this: the true weight of Fujian's agricultural and sideline food processing lies not in how much aquatic product it catches and farms, but in whether it can keep converting "the freshness of the raw material" into "the value added in processing", whether Fuzhou's fish balls can grow more ready-to-eat, branded high-value products beyond the volume-driven frozen ball; whether Ningde's croaker and Fuqing's roasted eel can climb another step in deep processing and export standards; whether Xiapu's kelp and laver can move from primary drying to fine seasoning and ready-to-eat processing. Having the raw material at sea is Fujian's gift, but the contest in this industry settles, in the end, at the processing end onshore. How a province treats each fish and each frond that comes ashore from the sea often tells more about the grade of the industry than how much it caught.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Fujian agricultural and sideline food processing factory directory and industrial data)
  • Fujian Provincial Bureau of Statistics, 2023 Fujian Statistical Communique on National Economic and Social Development (2023 total aquatic output about 8.902 million tonnes, up 3.3 percent year on year, marine aquaculture about 5.798 million tonnes)
  • Fujian Provincial Department of Ocean and Fisheries and related public reports (2024 large-scale aquatic processing enterprise revenue about RMB89.3 billion, total profit about RMB5.9 billion, total processed output about 3.98 million tonnes, surimi and seaweed products ranking first nationally, three processing clusters in eastern, central and southern Fujian, processed-goods export share over 36 percent)
  • Fuzhou Municipal Government portal and Fuzhou News Network (Fuzhou as China's fish-ball capital, Lianjiang as its hometown, 2022 Fuzhou surimi product output over 200,000 tonnes with output value about RMB20 billion and over half the national market, intelligent fish-ball factories selling to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere)
  • Fujian Provincial Government portal, China News Service and Ningde Net (2023 Ningde large yellow croaker output about 212,000 tonnes, nearly 80 percent of the national total, full-chain output value over RMB20 billion, dozens of processing enterprises and more than 40 lines, product series and varieties)
  • Ningde Net and Fujian Provincial Government portal (Xiapu as China's hometown of kelp, 2023 kelp output about 147,000 tonnes, nearly 90 percent of the prefecture total, farmed kelp about 300,000 mu with output value about RMB4 billion, laver over 130,000 mu with output value over RMB1 billion, Fujian laver and oyster output ranking first nationally)
  • Fuzhou Municipal Government portal and Fujian Tianma Science and Technology Group public materials (Fuqing's Tianma Technology eel full chain "China's Eel Valley", roasted-eel products sold to over 70 countries and regions across Europe, the Americas and Asia)
  • Anjoy Foods Group public materials and securities research reports (Anjoy founded in Xiamen, Fujian in December 2001, the country's largest frozen-food enterprise, 2022 total revenue about RMB12.183 billion, frozen surimi products at about three-tenths of revenue)