1. To Understand Hainan's Food Manufacturing, Look First at What It Grows

In most provinces, food manufacturing is an industry that follows staple grain and livestock: where grain grows, pastry and baking are made; where farming is dense, meat products follow; in cane regions, sugar is boiled. The raw-material structure decides the form of processing. That logic holds for inland and plain provinces, but applied to Hainan the eye must first shift from the field to the trees.

Hainan lies in the tropics, with limited plains for large-scale cultivation; bulk land materials such as staple grain and hogs are no advantage. But it has two tropical cash crops rarely found elsewhere, coconut and coffee. The coconut is almost the symbol of this island, with palm groves stretching across Wenchang and Qionghai; coffee has taken root on the hills of Wanning Xinglong and Chengmai Fushan. So Hainan's food manufacturing, from the very start, has revolved not around the granary but around tropical crops. Its core problem is not how to process away a grain surplus, but how to take coconut and coffee, two materials carrying their own regional recognition, and turn them, stably and with added value, into factory beverages, candy and roasted products.

It is precisely this endowment of "distinctive raw material that must be turned into varied products locally" that has forced Hainan's food manufacturing into a special form, with coconut processing as its unambiguous lead and coffee roasting as a distinctive wing. The Industry Research Institute treats it as a regional sample for exactly this reason: it and the staple-grain-driven processing of grain provinces are two entirely different paths, one hugging the grain field, the other the palm groves and coffee gardens. This report endorses no company's market performance; it only sets out the real structure of this tropical processing belt.

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

To weigh Hainan's food manufacturing, first see how thick this main beam of coconut processing is.

Hainan is China's largest coconut-producing region, with provincial coconut-processing annual output value already exceeding RMB20 billion, more than 300 registered coconut-processing enterprises, and over 200 developed coconut product varieties, spanning coconut-juice beverages, coconut candy, coconut powder, coconut oil, desiccated coconut and coconut handicrafts. Among them, coconut processors of some scale number about 359, close to three-tenths of all such enterprises nationwide, and are mostly small and micro firms. For an island to grow over RMB20 billion of processing value on the single raw material of coconut rests not on one hit product, but on a whole set of pressing, extraction, blending and packaging skills worked out around the coconut over decades.

But this beam has one unavoidable weak point: raw material. Local Hainan coconut output is far from enough to feed these 300-plus factories. Over 90 percent of the province's coconut-processing raw material is imported, with about 520,000 tonnes of raw coconut imported in 2022 and about 600,000 tonnes in 2023. In other words, the "island" badge of Hainan coconut processing rests on a chain heavily dependent on imported Southeast Asian raw material. This decides that the real strength of Hainan coconut processing lies not in "growing a lot" but in "making it well": the coconut it can grow locally is limited, and what stands is the capacity at the processing end to turn others' coconut into its own brands.

Once this beam stands, the rest of Hainan's food manufacturing, that is candy and baking, solid drinks, coffee roasting and tropical dried fruit, is more a support and distinctive category extended around coconut and tropical specialties. To understand this industry in Hainan is first to accept that its centre lies in the coconut, then to look at what each distinctive cluster is doing.

3. Coconut Tree Group: Turning a Coconut Into a Five-Billion Beverage Business

The most recognisable card in Hainan's coconut processing is Coconut Tree Group's coconut juice.

Coconut Tree Group, headquartered in Haikou, is an emblematic enterprise in the domestic coconut-juice beverage trade, its packaging and advertising style almost a public memory. In 2023, Coconut Tree's total annual sales reached about RMB5.098 billion, up about 8 percent year on year, with total annual volume of about 700,000 tonnes, up over 10 percent. For a firm built mainly on the single category of coconut juice to hold steady at five billion in annual sales rests on decades of coconut-milk extraction and blending technique, a stable imported-material procurement system, and beverage channels covering the whole country.

Coconut Tree's significance is in showing that Hainan coconut can be made into a nationwide beverage leader, turning coconut juice, a product once heavily regional, into a common choice on shelves across the country. Its upstream demand is thus highly concentrated and steady: large volumes of imported coconut milk and meat, beverage-filling and aseptic-packaging line equipment, and packaging materials such as aseptic cartons and cans form a buyer of considerable scale with ever stricter specification demands. A leader holding the coconut-juice line at five billion moves a whole chain of upstream supply around coconut beverages.

4. Chunguang and Nanguo: Turning the Coconut Into Two Hundred Items on the Shelf

If Coconut Tree is about making coconut into one beverage, then Chunguang and Nanguo are about splitting the coconut into a whole row of snacks on the shelf.

Chunguang Food, founded in 1996, uses Hainan coconut and tropical fruit as its main materials and, starting from coconut candy, has grown into nine product series, that is candy, biscuits, pastry, solid drinks, roasted coffee and dried fruit, with over 200 items and annual output exceeding 10,000 tonnes. Nanguo Food, founded in 1992, focuses on coconut nutrition food, with pure coconut powder and coconut nutritional cereal as its mainstays, a factory area of over 60,000 square metres, annual production capacity of over 50,000 tonnes and more than 1,500 employees. One leans to candy and roasting, the other to coconut powder and nutritional drinks; their paths differ, but together they extend the coconut from a beverage material into a snack spectrum covering candy, drinks, baking and dried fruit.

This capacity to "split one coconut into two hundred items" is exactly the expression of the depth of Hainan coconut processing. It does not settle for pressing coconut into juice but, by differing needs of candy, drinks, baking and ready-to-eat, makes the same material into a whole row of products, from the most basic coconut candy to higher-value coconut powder, desiccated coconut and compound drinks. This deep processing's upstream demand thus extends from coconut meat and milk to ingredients such as sugar, milk powder and cereal, and to the full support of candy forming, baking and drink-powder equipment.

5. Xinglong and Fushan: A Small, Fine Processing Line for a Homegrown Coffee

Another distinctive card of Hainan's food manufacturing lies in two spots, Wanning and Chengmai: the coffee of Xinglong and Fushan.

Hainan is one of China's few regions able to grow coffee at scale, with provincial coffee planting of about 30,000 mu, mainly in Wanning, Chengmai, Qiongzhong and Baisha, having formed a layout focused on Wanning Xinglong, Chengmai's Fushan town and Qiongzhong's Limushan town. Annual green-bean output is about 2,900 tonnes, of which Xinglong coffee yields around 2,000 tonnes a year. In value, the full coffee chain in Hainan reached near RMB1.5 billion in 2022, and the province's annual coffee-product processing capacity reaches up to 9,000 tonnes, that capacity already clearly exceeding local green-bean output, meaning Hainan coffee, like coconut, must supplement the processing end with a considerable share of imported green beans.

The coffee of Xinglong and Fushan runs a small, fine business. Its scale is far below coconut processing, but it wins on recognition and story: Xinglong coffee carries the planting and roasting tradition brought back by returned overseas Chinese, while Fushan coffee links cafe and plantation into an agritourism scene. This wing's processing leans to deep work such as roasting, grinding, instant and drip, with upstream demand concentrated in coffee green beans, roasting and packaging equipment, and the ingredients and packaging materials needed for instant and drip. Small as coffee is, it gives Hainan food manufacturing a second regional calling card beyond coconut.

6. Leaders and Upstream: The Procurement System Seen Through Coconut Tree and Chunguang

Gathering the clusters, the leadership structure of Hainan's food manufacturing 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 Haikou's Coconut Tree Group, which showed that Hainan coconut can be made into a nationwide coconut-juice beverage leader. Chunguang and Nanguo represent another path, building candy, coconut powder and nutritional drinks around the coconut to cover the shelf. Adding coffee roasting represented by Xinglong and Fushan, Hainan food manufacturing shows a structure of "coconut as the main beam, coffee as a distinctive feature, several blocks each with its own leader." This structure also means its upstream procurement demand splits into several systems that overlap yet each has its emphasis:

  • Coconut raw material: coconut milk, meat, desiccated coconut and coconut water are the shared base of coconut juice, candy and powder, with demand concentrated and heavily dependent on Southeast Asian imports, ever stricter on quality, specification and landing stability;
  • Coffee green beans and roasting material: with limited local green-bean output, roasting firms need stable imported and local green-bean sources, the most core upstream of the coffee wing;
  • Sugar, milk powder, cereal and other food ingredients: from boiling coconut candy, to formulas for coconut powder and nutritional drinks, to auxiliaries for candy and biscuits, a steady buyer of various sugars, dairy, grain ingredients and food additives;
  • Packaging materials: aseptic cartons and cans for coconut juice, composite soft packaging for coconut candy and biscuits, can and bag packaging for coconut powder, drip and instant packaging for coffee, mixed in type and large in volume, an easily underrated niche;
  • Beverage filling, candy forming and roasting equipment: from aseptic filling lines for coconut juice, to forming and packaging lines for candy, to spray-drying equipment for coconut powder and roasting and grinding equipment for coffee, spanning many process classes with rich equipment-procurement tiers.

For sales teams supplying these Hainan coconut, coffee and tropical food manufacturers upstream, Tianxia Gongchang lets them filter the factory directory and decision-maker contacts precisely along the two dimensions of region and industry for Hainan food manufacturing, turning door-by-door inquiry across Haikou, Wenchang, Qionghai, Wanning and Chengmai, and across coconut juice, coconut candy, coconut powder and coffee, into customer development by map.

7. The Institute's Assessment: The Material Comes by Import, the Confidence by Craft

Putting the blocks together, Hainan's food manufacturing shows a shape wholly unlike that of grain provinces: the raw material comes not from local grain fields and pastures but from coconut and coffee, two tropical crops, and the main beam, coconut processing, is thick enough to grow over RMB20 billion of value and 300-plus factories. Coconut Tree made the coconut into a nationwide coconut-juice leader selling five billion a year, Chunguang and Nanguo split the coconut into over 200 shelf items, and Xinglong and Fushan roasted coffee into a small, fine regional calling card, each with its own material, technique and leader.

Its worries are written in the same word, raw material, and weigh heavier than for coastal aquatic provinces. Over 90 percent of Hainan coconut-processing material is imported, and coffee roasting capacity already exceeds local green-bean output. This means the lifeline of Hainan food manufacturing rests, to a considerable degree, on Southeast Asian coconut and the world's coffee green-bean supply; once import prices, exchange rates or shipping swing, the whole processing chain shakes with them. Limited local planting scale makes it hard, in the short term, to fundamentally reverse this pattern of "processing on the island, supply from off it."

The Industry Research Institute's view is this: the true weight of Hainan's food manufacturing lies never in how much coconut or coffee it grows locally, but in whether it can keep converting "the recognition of tropical raw material" into "the brand power of processed products", whether coconut juice can grow more premium, health-oriented products beyond a national-favourite drink; whether snacks like coconut candy and powder can upgrade from volume-driven souvenirs into branded everyday consumption with a premium; whether the coffee of Xinglong and Fushan can step off the island and make a name in specialty and brand terms. Relying on imported material is a reality Hainan cannot avoid, but the confidence of this industry settles, in the end, at the end where it turns outside material into its own signature craft. How an island treats coconut and coffee, the two things it can best show, often tells more about the grade of the industry than how much it grows.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (Hainan food manufacturing factory directory and industrial data)
  • Jiemian News, National Forestry and Grassland Administration portal and related public reports (Hainan coconut-processing annual output value over RMB20 billion, over 200 developed coconut product varieties, over 300 registered coconut-processing enterprises, about 359 scale coconut processors at about 28.1 percent of the national total, mostly small and micro firms)
  • National Forestry and Grassland Administration portal, General Administration of Customs data and public reports (over 90 percent of Hainan coconut-processing material imported, about 520,000 tonnes of raw coconut imported in 2022, about 600,000 tonnes in 2023)
  • Guanchao New Consumption, Hexun and other public reports (Coconut Tree Group headquartered in Haikou, 2023 total annual sales about RMB5.098 billion, up about 8 percent year on year, total annual volume about 700,000 tonnes, up over 10 percent)
  • Hainan Chunguang Food Co., Ltd. public materials (Chunguang founded in 1996, using Hainan coconut and tropical fruit, starting from coconut candy, nine product series with over 200 items, annual output over 10,000 tonnes)
  • Hainan Nanguo Food Industrial Co., Ltd. public materials (Nanguo founded in 1992, focused on coconut nutrition food, pure coconut powder as mainstay, factory area over 60,000 square metres, annual capacity over 50,000 tonnes, over 1,500 employees)
  • Hainan Daily, Farmers' Daily online and The Paper public reports (Hainan coffee planting about 30,000 mu, green-bean output about 2,900 tonnes a year, Xinglong coffee about 2,000 tonnes a year, 2022 full coffee chain value near RMB1.5 billion, provincial coffee-product processing capacity up to about 9,000 tonnes, layout focused on Wanning Xinglong, Chengmai's Fushan town and Qiongzhong's Limushan town)
  • Hainan Provincial Bureau of Statistics, 2023 Hainan Statistical Communique on National Economic and Social Development and Haikou Statistical Communique (operating conditions of food manufacturing and other industrial sectors)