Food Processing, it’s By Products, Growth and Demand: Globally
Food processing is basically the transformation of agricultural products into food. Processing food in many forms is included in food processing from grinding grain to make flour to home cooking to complex industrial methods used in making convenience food. Several things include food processing such as basic preparation of food, alteration of food product, and lastly techniques preservation and packaging. A lot of new products have been innovated due to food processing such as concentrated fruit juices, dried coffee, and ready-to-eat foods. India’s food processing sector is very wide and covers fruits, vegetables, spices, meat, dairy products, alcoholic beverages, and some other consumer product groups like confectionery, chocolate, and high protein food, etc.
Growth and Employment
The processed food accounts for 10% of India’s total exports, growth in the food processing sector is anticipated to open a lot of opportunities for investors having strong connections in the agro-value chain. Globally the food processed industries hold the value of over 2 trillion dollars and comprise over 400,000 businesses. A properly built food processing sector with a higher level of processing helps in lessening wastage, improves value addition, promotes crop diversification, and ensures a better return to the farmers. The food processing sector concluded as much as 8.83 % of the gross value in 2017-2018. The processed food export value during the year 2018-2019 was of the order of US $35.50 billion accounting for 10.70 % of India’s total exports.
The food processing market is expected to reach an estimated $4.1 trillion by 2024 with a CAGR of 4.3% from 2019 to 2024. Moreover, between 2018 and 2019, the value of imported processed food was the US $19.32 billion. Overall the number of people engaged in registering the food processing sector was 18.54 Lakhs. The unregistered food processing sector supported employment to 51.11 lakh workers.
Status of Food Processing In India
The future of the food processing market looks quite promising with emerging opportunities in beverage, dairy, the seafood industry, and meat. The main reason for this industry's growth is the high demand for ready-to-eat food products, evolving lifestyles, and more number of nuclear families and working females. India is known as the land of spices that provides different varieties worth over Rs 3500 crores amounting to 25-30% of global production, which is processed for value –addition and export. The food production of India is projected at 500 million tones and the food processing industry has a lot of growth potential. India is one of the largest and developing markets for food products that are growing at about 1.6 % yearly. Globally, the food products industry is anticipated to reach $8,127.2 billion by the year 2023. During the last 5 years ending 2017-2018, food processing in India has been growing on an average growth rate of around 8.41% in comparison to around 3.45% in agriculture at 2011-2012 prices. The food processing sector is also emerging as a vital segment for the Indian economy in terms of its contribution to GDP, employment, and investment. The industry of food processing is one of the important employment intensive segments constituting 12.43% of employment generators in all registered factory sectors in 2016-2017. According to researchers, the processed fruit and vegetable segment will be witnessing the highest growth in the upcoming years due to people getting inspired towards a vegan diet.
Conclusion
The projects by NPCS on “Food Processing and Agriculture Based Projects, Snack Food, Frozen Food, Agro Processing Technology, Processed Food, Instant Food, Food Industry, Food Preservation, Canned Food, Packed Food, Ready to Eat Food, Cereal Food, Pickle, Spices, Grain Milling” provides answers to all the major questions related to the food industry, such as the highest growing segment, business risks and competitive threats to emerging trends of the industry.
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