China’s Emerging Ready Meal and Instant Food Market

Ever-Increasing Instant Food and Ready Meal Market

The instant food market in Asia has for a long time been one of the sectors with the most impressive pace of increase ever since the instant noodle was introduced to the market by Momofuku Ando who was called the Father of Instant Food and the founder of Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd.

Becoming popular and welcomed by the consumer and market than ever for its convenience, hygiene, affordable price, and so on, the instant food market has diverged into a lot of subcategories with a tremendous variety of products that come in different forms and shapes.

The Unexpectedly Promotive Impact of Pandemic

When it comes to the coronavirus, the things and topics that occur to us tend always to be negative. Yet in the case of the instant food market, especially in China, its market share and volume have surged conspicuously during the pandemic Covid-19 for the reason of block down, control of traffic, curfew, and other restrictive policies for which people are forced to stay at home. In such a context the instant food turned to be the outlet for them.

The Packaging of Ready Meal and Instant Food and Correspondent Packaging Solution

Though come in a considerable category, the package of products in the instant and ready meal market has a lot in common and shares a typical pattern.

A carton sleeve is the most commonly seen form of package of instant food and ready meal. The tray in which the containment is loaded is overlapped by a piece of cardboard and sealed by melt glue on the bottom. Taking a glance at the products available on the shelf in the supermarket, you will for sure find the majority of them are packed in this way.

There are also several alternatives of packaging automation solution for carton sleeving. Generally they are:

• cartoning machine for pre-glued sleeve carton
• carton sleeving solution on Horizontal Cartoner with Adhesive Application
• specially designed Automatic Wraparound Sleever

In the following context, we are going to give some rudimentary introduction for each of these packaging automation solutions.

Cartoning Machine for Pre-Glued Sleeve

A sleeve is a form of carton packaging that surrounds the product with two sides of it exposed to the outer context for the purpose that consumer sees the containment inside the package. If you’ve read our Guide for Carton and Cartoning Machine, you must notice that a sleeve is such a form of carton that does not have any closure panel, tuck flap, or dust flap.

In the case of the packaging automation for the pre-glued sleeve, we can just by using the standard cartoning machine to provide it with the automatic solution. Pre-glued sleeves are loaded in the carton container of the cartoner, the erector opens the sleeve into which the product is inserted by the insertor. There is no need, in the following process, installing any tuck flap and dust flap closer on the cartoner thus the cost is relatively more economic than the cartoning solution of other products.

Carton Sleeving Solution on Horizontal Cartoner with Adhesive Application

The sleeve may not always come in a pre-glued form for some reason. If the customer requires an automation solution for cardboard/sleeve not pre-glued, the adhesive application cartoner can be the choice and a special glue sealing system should then be incorporated in the cartoner just as the following pictures show.

Specially designed Automatic Wraparound Sleever

Regardless of the fact that the cartoning machines are capable to offer automatic carton sleeving solutions for the ready meal and instant food, there is a third alternative available that customers can turn to. A fully automatic wraparound sleever is the specially designed packaging machine to provide a way out for this situation.

Looking for more details? Get in contact for ÉLITER´s Packaging Solution for Ready Meal and Instant Food

At ÉLITER, we are chasing the trend of emerging and upsurging the food market in China and worldwide and we feel always passionate to offer you our best packaging automation solution and efficient packaging machinery.

Our engineering team, service, and commercial professionals are always at your disposal. Click here to find some of our cartoning solutions, or get in contact with us for a special review.