I. Why Fujian Food Deserves Its Own Study

When we talk about China's major manufacturing provinces, Fujian is easily labeled with "footwear and apparel," "petrochemicals," or "electronics" — food rarely comes to mind first. Yet ranked by industry scale, Fujian's food industry has long stood in the country's first tier.

In 2018, the province had 2,396 above-scale food-industry enterprises, generating RMB 666.473 billion in gross industrial output and RMB 601.859 billion in main business revenue, up 10.1% year on year, ranking sixth nationally. By the end of 2022, the number of above-scale food-industry enterprises had grown to about 2,465, and the food-industry clusters of Fuzhou, Zhangzhou, and Quanzhou had each surpassed RMB 100 billion in output. That a province known for footwear, apparel, and electronics has simultaneously built food into the sixth-largest in the nation is worth studying in itself.

What is more notable is that Fujian food is not a generic notion of "agricultural processing," but several clearly positioned clusters, each its own school: Jinjiang has made snack foods into the "Capital of China's Leisure Food," Zhangzhou has made canned and frozen produce into the "Capital of China's Canned Food," and Hui'an has grown a national beverage-and-bakery leader in Dali. This report does not aim to vaguely say "Fujian food is strong," but to explain each block of this coastal food belt in turn: what each makes, who leads, and what kind of customer opportunity the upstream leaves for suppliers.

II. Jinjiang: Turning a County-Level City into the Capital of Leisure Food

The most distinctive card in Fujian food is the snack foods of Quanzhou's Jinjiang.

Jinjiang is famous for footwear and apparel, but it is also a "Strong City of China's Food Industry" and the "Capital of China's Leisure Food." Its local food industry now exceeds RMB 80 billion in scale, with a complete system spanning candy, jelly, bakery, and puffed snacks. Its candy output accounts for about one-quarter of the national total and 90% of Fujian's; its jelly output ranks second nationally. That a county-level city can rank near the national top in a food segment rests on decades of accumulated similar factories, ingredient supply, and distribution networks.

Another feature of Jinjiang is high brand density. A batch of brands aimed at the mass snack market — Panpan, Yake, Crayon Shinchan, Qinqin, and others — all grew up here. Their shared move in recent years has been to push their business from contract manufacturing and domestic sales toward proprietary brands and exports. Take Panpan: the share of its proprietary-brand exports has risen from about 20% in 2018 to about 80% in 2024 — showing that the foundation of Jinjiang's snack foods is shifting from "private-label volume" to "own-brand going global."

To understand Jinjiang, one must first accept that it runs a scaled-up mass-consumer business: it wins on category density, brand depth, and supply-chain maturity, not on a single hit product. This structure makes its demand for raw materials, packaging, and ingredients both large and stable.

III. Zhangzhou: China's Only Canning Capital

If Jinjiang is about brands and snacks, then Zhangzhou is about exports and raw-material processing.

Zhangzhou is a "Famous Food City of China" and the only city in the country awarded the title "Capital of China's Canned Food." Its food industry is built around canned goods, frozen and dehydrated produce, freeze-dried products, aquatic processing, edible fungi, and fruit-and-vegetable beverages — a classic export-oriented raw-material processing cluster. In 2021, Zhangzhou's food-industry output approached RMB 170 billion, with about 2,227 food-producing enterprises, of which roughly 602 were above-scale, ranking first in industry scale among Fujian's nine prefecture-level cities. Canned-food exports are its hardest block: the city exports about 470,000 tons a year, accounting for roughly 15.6% of national canned-food exports, with products sold to more than 120 countries and regions.

Zhangzhou's food structure has a distinct trait — "many stars, few moons." Billion-yuan enterprises are numerous, but those above RMB 1 billion are fewer, and more than 90% are small and medium enterprises. This means Zhangzhou's foundation is a large number of small and medium food-processing factories rather than a few giants. Its moat lies precisely there: a complete chain from raw-material cultivation and processing to export, plus decades of accumulated craft in edible fungi, produce, and aquatic processing, forming a capacity cluster hard to move away as a whole.

The challenges of this block are similar to those of all export-oriented food processing: technical trade barriers in overseas markets, raw-material price volatility, and exchange-rate and shipping costs. Zhangzhou's response is to upgrade toward higher-value links such as freeze-drying, ready-to-eat, and prepared foods, gradually turning "selling canned raw materials" into "selling processed foods."

IV. Hui'an and Quanzhou: National Leaders Grown from Contract Factories

Fujian food's third face is a national brand leader grown from coastal contract-manufacturing soil — most typically, Dali of Quanzhou's Hui'an.

Dali Foods Group is headquartered in Hui'an; it began as a county biscuit factory and now holds multiple national brands including Dali Garden, Copico, Haochidian, Doubendou, Hi-Tiger, and Heqizheng, covering bakery, puffed snacks, plant-protein beverages, functional drinks, and herbal tea. In 2021, Dali posted revenue of about RMB 22.294 billion and net profit of about RMB 3.725 billion, making it one of the few hundred-billion-class diversified food companies in Fujian. It listed in Hong Kong in 2015 and completed a privatization delisting in 2023.

Dali's significance lies not only in its own scale but in the path it demonstrates: a food company starting from a coastal contract factory can become a national leader through a combination of multiple brands and categories. This approach of "one company spanning many food sub-tracks" forms a third logic alongside Jinjiang's category density and Zhangzhou's raw-material processing — winning through a brand matrix and channel depth. Around such a leader, a batch of supporting enterprises in packaging, ingredients, beverage filling, and contract manufacturing have also gathered locally.

V. Beyond the Three Blocks: A Complete Coastal Food Belt

Put Jinjiang, Zhangzhou, and Hui'an together, and add Fuzhou's food manufacturing and the province's refined tea and aquatic processing, and the full picture of Fujian food becomes clear: a coastal food belt with three clusters each above RMB 100 billion in output, an industry scale long ranking among the nation's largest.

The value of this food belt is often obscured by the impression that "Fujian is a footwear and electronics province." By single category, Fujian may not lead everywhere; but by the completeness of its categories and the maturity of its clusters, it holds nationally leading snack-food capacity, the country's only canning capital, and a national beverage-and-bakery leader like Dali, covering nearly all the mainstream food tracks from mass snacks to export canned goods to branded beverages. The wider the categories spread, the harder it is for volatility in any single category or market to shake the foundation of the province's food industry.

For upstream suppliers, this completeness of categories means diverse procurement demand. A supplier fixated only on one type of raw material or packaging will underestimate Fujian — because the demand here goes far beyond that.

VI. The Upstream Supply Chain: Several Non-Overlapping Procurement Systems

Fujian food's diverse structure means its upstream procurement demand also splits into several non-overlapping systems:

  • Agricultural, produce, and aquatic raw materials: Zhangzhou's canning, freezing, and aquatic processing have concentrated and stable demand for produce, edible fungi, and aquatic raw materials, with rising requirements for specifications, quality, and traceability
  • Sugar, oil, starch, and food ingredients: Jinjiang's candy, bakery, and puffed snacks, and Hui'an's biscuits and beverages, are stable buyers of sugar, vegetable oil, starch, flavors, colorants, and various food additives
  • Packaging materials: from the flexible packaging of candy and puffed snacks, to the tinplate and glass jars of canned goods, to the bottles, cans, and aseptic packs of beverages, Fujian food's packaging procurement is large in volume and varied in type — an easily underestimated niche market
  • Beverage concentrates, plant protein, and functional ingredients: Dali's herbal tea, plant-protein, and functional drinks drive stable external procurement of concentrates, protein raw materials, and functional ingredients
  • Food-processing and packaging equipment: from Jinjiang's candy depositing, puffing, and packaging lines, to Zhangzhou's canning sterilization, freeze-drying, and quick-freezing equipment, to beverage filling lines, Fujian food's equipment procurement spans multiple process categories with a remarkably rich range of demand
  • Cold-chain and storage facilities: frozen produce, aquatic processing, and beverages have continuous demand for cold storage, cold-chain transport, and storage equipment — procurement that grows in proportion to capacity

These kinds of demand correspond respectively to several different factory groups: Jinjiang snack foods, Zhangzhou raw-material processing, and Hui'an beverages and bakery. An upstream salesperson who views Fujian through the lens of a single category easily misses several of these blocks.

Sales teams supplying these Fujian food manufacturers can filter for factory directories and decision-maker contacts by the two dimensions of region and industry — Fujian × food manufacturing — on Tianxia Gongchang, turning door-to-door inquiry across Jinjiang, Zhangzhou, and Hui'an, and across snack foods, canned goods, and beverages, into targeted development.

VII. The Institute's Assessment

Pulling Fujian food's blocks together, it presents an underrated industrial profile: it does not win by a single hit product, but stands on the completeness of its category mix. Jinjiang has made snack foods into a national capital, Zhangzhou has made canned and raw-material processing into the country's only canning capital, and Hui'an has grown a national leader spanning many categories. The three blocks each have their own logic and their own cycle — one about brands and channels, one about exports and raw materials, one about brand matrix and diversification — and they are not strongly correlated, which is precisely where this coastal food belt's resilience lies.

The variables for this structure going forward are distributed across the propositions of each block. The ceiling of Jinjiang's snack foods depends on whether proprietary brands can keep expanding overseas and truly shift from private-label volume to brand premium; the way out for Zhangzhou's raw-material processing lies in whether it can upgrade from selling canned raw materials to selling freeze-dried, ready-to-eat, and prepared foods, clearing overseas technical trade barriers; the test for Hui'an's Dali lies in how, amid the divergence of beverage and snack consumption, it can keep telling a new story with its multi-brand matrix.

The Institute's assessment is this: Fujian food's weight lies not in being number one in any single product, but in having simultaneously brought snack foods, export canned goods, and branded beverages — three things of differing difficulty and differing logic — to a nationally leading level: turning a county-level city into the capital of leisure food, turning a prefecture-level city into the country's only canning capital, and turning a county biscuit factory into a national food leader. This complete, non-betting structure has been ground out over decades across different segments. For upstream suppliers, recognizing that Fujian is not one market but several distinct markets is the precondition for efficiently developing Fujian's food-factory customers.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (directory and industry data for Fujian food-manufacturing factories)
  • Fujian's Food-Industry Enterprise Main Revenue Rises to Sixth Nationally — The Paper (in 2018, 2,396 above-scale food-industry enterprises provincewide, RMB 666.473 billion gross industrial output, RMB 601.859 billion main business revenue, up 10.1%, ranking sixth nationally)
  • People's Government of Fujian Province official portal (by end of 2022, about 2,465 above-scale food-industry enterprises provincewide; the food-industry clusters of Fuzhou, Zhangzhou, and Quanzhou each surpassing RMB 100 billion)
  • Jinjiang Launches Global Food Supply Chain Center — People's Government of Fujian Province (Jinjiang food industry over RMB 80 billion, Capital of China's Leisure Food, candy output about 25% of national and 90% of Fujian, jelly output second nationally)
  • Jinjiang Food Connects with the World — Jinjiang Economic Daily (Panpan's proprietary-brand export share rising from about 20% in 2018 to about 80% in 2024)
  • Output Over RMB 170 Billion: How the Famous Food City of Zhangzhou Built Canned and Snack Foods into a Hundred-Billion Cluster — National Business Daily (in 2021, Zhangzhou food output near RMB 170 billion, 2,227 food-producing enterprises of which 602 above-scale, canned and aquatic exports to over 120 countries and regions, mostly small and medium enterprises)
  • Do You Know China's Canning Capital? Explaining Zhangzhou's Food-Industry Traits — industry report (Zhangzhou as the country's only "Capital of China's Canned Food," canned-food exports of about 470,000 tons a year, 15.6% of the national export total)
  • Earning RMB 10 Million a Day: Dali Foods' 2021 Annual Report — China News Service Fujian (Dali Foods Group headquartered in Hui'an, 2021 revenue RMB 22.294 billion and net profit RMB 3.725 billion, brands including Dali Garden, Copico, Haochidian, Doubendou, Hi-Tiger, and Heqizheng, Hong Kong listing in 2015 and privatization delisting in 2023)