Data from the China Pre-made Food Alliance show the number of pre-cooked food companies in the nation has risen from 2,000 a decade ago to more than 70,000.

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report, a research, media and investments business best known for its Hurun Rich List, which ranks the wealthiest individuals in China, said the nation's pre-cooked food industry has developed rapidly in recent years.

In 2021, the market scale of this industry reached about 350 billion yuan ($50.8 billion), a year-on-year rise of 20 percent, and it is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan within the next five years, he said.

During the International Precooked Food Industry Conference in Foshan, Guangdong province, early last month, the Hurun China Precooked Food Companies 2023 catalog was released by the Hurun Research Institute and the conference organizers.

It was the first time Hurun had released a top-100 list of pre-cooked food companies.

Such food can be categorized into four main types based on the level of processing difficulty: ready-to-assemble; ready-to-cook; ready-to-heat; and ready-to-eat. Of the companies featured on the list, 44 percent specialize in ready-to-cook products, while 25 percent offer ready-to-assemble options.

The list shows that Guangdong is home to the largest number of these companies, with 20 based in the province. Shanghai and Beijing are second and third, with 14 and 12 companies, respectively.

More than half the companies on the list, including Anjoy Foods and Qianwei Yangchu Food, focus primarily on food processing. In addition, one-fifth of them are caterers, such as Yum China, Meizhou Dongpo, and Juewei Food.

Hoogewerf said he hopes the list can help more people take notice of and understand the pre-cooked food industry and also attract more powerful enterprises to this field.

"The industry has entered a golden age of rapid development and innovation. I believe the list will be quite different in five years, as it will include many emerging companies. We hope to encourage more new and innovative enterprises to enter this industry," he said.

Hoogewerf thinks related policies in different regions, such as the issuance of 10 measures to accelerate high-quality development of the industry in Guangdong, have played a role in stimulating development of the pre-cooked food market.