Technological Evolution, Policy Drivers and Future Trends in the Processing Equipment for Convenience Staple Foods

Convenience staple foods are an important branch of the modern food industry, and the technical level of their processing equipment technology directly determines product quality, safety and production efficiency. Market growth coupled with consumption upgrading has put forward new requirements for flexibility, precision and high efficiency in processing equipment. Focusing on processing equipment for convenience staple foods, this paper systematically sorts out the international technological evolution, domestic development status and policy trends of the industry. Internationally, Japan takes precision control and sterilization as its core competitiveness, Europe and the United States focus on hygienic design, modularization and quick-freezing technologies, and South Korea features market-driven improved innovation. Globally, the industry presents three common characteristics: high-speed production, modular design and digital integration. China's processing equipment has advantages in complete machine integration and large-scale production. Nevertheless, it has shortcomings such as high external dependence on core technologies, insufficient flexibility and intelligence, contradictions between nutritional retention and processing efficiency, pressures of green and low-carbon transition, imperfect standard system and inadequate food safety guarantee, which constitute the bottlenecks restricting industrial development. At the policy level, China is shifting from a scale-oriented development to quality- and intelligence orientation, emphasizing whole industrial chain governance and green and low-carbon development. Looking ahead, the industry will to evolve toward the deep integration of intelligence and digitalization, green and sustainable development, flexibility and modularization, integration of new processing technologies, personalized nutrition customization, and whole industrial chain collaboration and domestic localization. This review intends to provide a reference for relevant research and industrial decision-making.