我国调味品工业发展方兴未艾——访中国调味品协会常务副会长兼理事会部干事 卫祥云

China condiment industry continues growing-Interview with WEI Xiangyun executive vice president of China Condiment Industry Association

调味品是人民生活必需品。我国的调味品生产历史悠久，源远流长。近年来，调味品工业经过不断发展，生产和市场出现了空前的繁荣和兴旺，并成为我国食品工业中的一朵奇葩。

Condiments are widely applied in food manufacturing and catering industries. The differences in climate, resources, customs and diet habits lead to great disparities in condiments application in different countries. Except of certain common condiments like salt and sugar, condiment products have obvious regional specialities. In recent years, China condiment industry achieves dramatic growth and has become a new economic growth driven force in food industry. The annual increase rate exceeded 10% in the last ten years. The industry achieves fast development, large output, diversified varieties, large market and good profit. At present, condiment market is booming, standardized production and quality management is being promoted, and the step of industrializaiton is speeding up. Traditional products such as soybean sauce and vinegar still maintain a strong presence. The booming industry and market is reflected by technique improvement, varieties increase, quality enhancement and the trend to nutrition, safety, convenience and better taste. Specifically speaking, biotechniques will be widely applied, which is significant to improve products quality. Enterprises use modern science and technology to develop new products, adopt strict quality management to guarantee products quality and achieve scale production and product update. In despite of economic downturn, the catering business has kept booming in recent years and stimulates condiment industry growing and promotes condiment technique improvement. In fact, catering business contributes distribution channels and driven force of profit increase to condiment industry. Every ten yuan spent for catering service include one for condiments. In addition, a revolution in household kitchen provides a number of opportunities for multi-functional flavourings and compound seasonings. In recent years, the concentration and influence of brands keeps enhancing. That is the most significant trend in condiment industry. However, the shortage of professionals in marketing is still a bottleneck restricting the development in condiment enterprises and industry. Many traditional techniques used in condiment industry have greatly changed. How to adopt to the changes is an issue involving traditional techniques improvement and manufactur- ing equipment development. Indeed, technique, technology, equipment and product quality are highly related which have mutual positive effects. Every kind of traditional condiment products, such as soybean sauce, vinegar and fermented beancurd, etc. have different flavours. Each category has a group of faithful consumers. But only if achieve industrialization and standardization, could China condiment industry gain stable market share. In 2009, China will take a series of measures to stimulate economy, which also provide new opportunities to condiment industry. In the current structure of food consumption in China, the consumption of alcohol drinks is reducing, and sweet foodstuffs consumption are also declining. In contrast, condiments consumption keeps increasing. China is not only a large producer of condiments, but also an important consumer. That means the potential of long term development of China condiment industry.