The growing tide of healthy eating has prompted more and more consumers to choose nuts with their own healthy properties. Under this demand, the nut industry is booming and gradually becomes a hot track in the tens of billions of market. In this track, also gradually extended new demand. Today, we will analyze the size of the nut market and the new direction of nut industry development.
Nut industry market size
According to the data, the global nut harvest area showed an overall rising trend from 2014 to 2020. By 2020, the global nut harvest area had reached 906,800 hectares, an increase of 7.63% compared with 2019. From 2014 to 2020, the global nut production showed an upward trend. By 2020, the global nut production increased to 1,019,200 tons, up 2.21% year-on-year.
The COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 had a short-term impact on the nut industry, but it also promoted the development of the nut industry in emerging channels such as live streaming e-commerce and community group buying. Since 2020, the scale of the nut e-commerce industry has maintained a long-term and stable growth trend. By 2022, the market scale of China's nut e-commerce industry has reached 24.818 billion yuan.
As the world's most populous country, China has become one of the world's largest nut markets. Nut e-commerce upstream is mainly a variety of nut agricultural raw materials supply. In recent years, the harvested area and output of nuts have been increasing year by year. In 2022, the output of roasted nuts is 1,765,600 tons.
According to Chinese Customs data: In May 2022, China imported 840,000 tons of dried fresh fruits and nuts, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%, and the import amount was $1.846 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.3%. In May 2022, China exported 140,000 tons of dried fresh fruits and nuts, a year-on-year decrease of 25.9%, and the export amount was $266 million, a year-on-year decrease of 19%; From January to May 2022, China imported 3.66 million tons of dried fresh melons, fruits and nuts, with an import value of 7.476 billion US dollars, and exported 1.06 million tons, with an export value of 1.704 billion US dollars.
Taste innovation, function addition
In the past, nut products have been priced on the high side, which is also a big pain point in the industry. In terms of market share, online channels occupy more than 80%, but the overall gross profit margin is not high. According to the Chinese Times reporters understand, the average gross profit margin of nut products in the industry at present is about 20%. Li Wei said that the nut industry has a relatively obvious homogenous competition. From the perspective of products, the degree of homogeneity is very high, especially some relatively niche products. Currently, more than 80 percent of the products in the entire industry come from the same suppliers. If we want to break through this dilemma, we need to have a sense of innovation. Enterprises should improve their research and development capacity and production capacity, constantly innovate and develop new products and new tastes.
With the awakening of consumers' health awareness, the concept of health and safety has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. People are no longer satisfied with the taste of snacks such as nuts, but want to have more functions. Data show that nuts with health management functions have emerged at the historic moment, and the market scale has expanded rapidly, increasing more than 60 times in three years. Among them, the protection of stomach health nuts are the most popular consumers, and maintain high growth.
Nuts with probiotics, for example, focus on gastrointestinal management. The combination of mixed nuts and probiotics was the most lucrative, with the consumption of mixed nuts with probiotics expanding rapidly, about 50 times in two years. Consumers are willing to pay more for mixed nuts with probiotics than for plain mixed nuts.
Improve the cost performance, downward compatibility
In recent years, the trend of sinking market in various industries is very obvious. On the one hand, as the consumption structure of first-tier and second-tier cities has been relatively mature and stable, the space for consumption expansion and upgrading needs to be further explored, while the consumption system of third-tier and fourth-tier cities as a whole needs to grow and develop, so the consumption upgrading demand of residents may be more prominent than that of big cities. On the other hand, the downward trend of consumption provides favorable ground for the expansion of consumption in third - and fourth-tier cities.
In rural areas, snack food made of nuts has become a feature industry. In terms of consumption characteristics, rural leisure food is mainly purchased by families, and consumers generally pay attention to the brand and quality of food. Before the New Year, peanuts and sunflower seeds were all kinds of nuts. In recent years, the types of nuts on people's dinner tables have been increasing, such as pecan fruit, Chinese herbs, pine nuts and so on have been put on the table.
Enterprises in the nut industry should base themselves on the domestic market, cultivate the domestic market carefully, and extend down to the second - and third-tier cities and rural markets. It is believed that China's large market of 1.4 billion population is enough to support the future development of this industry.
Subdivide the scene and the crowd
The study found that different consumers vary in their nut taste choices, the factors they consider when buying nuts, and where they eat them. But consumer demand for healthy food is immutable.
Therefore, for different scenarios and groups, the nut industry should be divided. On the one hand, daily nuts should be subdivided into groups and a number of daily nut products should be launched according to different groups and needs. Compared with other daily nut products with a single ratio, the nut ingredient ratio of different products can be changed according to the different nutritional requirements of different people, so as to make differentiation.
Scene nuts can also be introduced for different scenarios such as breakfast, afternoon tea and daily breaks. Such as nut toast, pumpkin vegetable fiber toast, chia seed vegetable fiber toast, nut cookies and other bakery products attract young people to buy and taste.
