Instant noodles steaming back to life

A visitor takes photos of packaged instant noodles from various countries at the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama, Japan. YOSHIKAZU TSUNO / FOR CHINA DAILY

Market picks up after limpness

Meticulously making an original cup of instant noodles at a museum is high on Zhou Yi's agenda for her visit to Japan.

Since childhood, she has been unable to resist noodles, the comfort food, sometimes eating them boiled with an egg, vegetables and meatballs.

Zhou, 32, who works for a technology company in Beijing and is planning to visit the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama, Japan, this month, said, "As a big fan, it will be a unique experience to select my favorite soup and toppings from many varieties, and make my own style cup noodles."

Vincent Shao, business group director with consultancy Kantar Worldpanel, said China's instant noodle market has picked up in the past 12 months after sales dropped for three consecutive years. Consumers are being drawn back by continuous innovation throughout the industry.

Consumption of instant noodles in China reached 40.25 billion units last year, a rise of 3.3 percent year-on-year, accounting for 38.9 percent of such consumption globally, with China the largest market, according to the World Instant Noodles Association.

This growth continues. Figures from data analytics company Nielsen show that in the first six months of this year, instant noodle sales in China rose by 7.5 percent year-on-year.

However, just four years ago, the industry was hit by a recession. Sales started falling in 2015, falling to 38.52 billion units the following year, according to the association.

Shao said that during this time, the industry faced a direct challenge from booming online food delivery services.

"To gain and maintain consumers, online food delivery platforms offered discounts, enabling customers to buy a meal for about 10 to 20 yuan ($1.42 to $2.85)," he said. "Many consumers then started to choose online food deliveries over instant noodles."

Figures from Meituan Research Institute, an organization with online food delivery and ticketing services platform Meituan Dianping, show that the online food delivery market in 2017 was worth about 204.6 billion yuan, a rise of 23 percent year-on-year.

According to research by the School of Economics and Management at the China University of Geosciences, when the online food delivery market grows by 1 percent, consumption of instant noodles falls by about 0.05 percent.

With discounts significantly reduced in the past year, the online food delivery market has slowed, with some consumers switching back to buying instant noodles, Shao said.

But more important, he said many instant noodle makers have made great efforts to improve the taste of their products and promote healthier recipes and more innovative cooking techniques, which have become popular among customers.