Rudong county in Nantong takes multiple measures to create a provincial-level advanced food manufacturing industry cluster. [Photo/WeChat account: rudongfb]

Rudong county – administered by the city of Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province – is home to 310 food production and processing enterprises who together earned 9.17 billion yuan ($1.42 billion) in main business revenue in 2020, a year-on-year increase of five percent.

Despite this growth, the industry is limited by its small scale, weak innovation capacity, and simple production processes, according to experts. Some of the enterprises were found to remain heavily dependent on traditional technology, which hindered the industry's pursuit of high-quality development.

To solve this problem, Rudong has launched an "industrial chain chief" system. A chain chief is elected from among local government officials and supported by several deputy chiefs to take charge of the food industrial chain.

The county clarified its goal of building a "3+2" food industrial system. The "3" represents the modern deep processing of agricultural and sideline products, snack food manufacturing, and refined beverage manufacturing, while the "2" refers to food technology research and development and local specialty health products.

To realize this goal, Rudong has worked hard to attract investment from food companies in the Yangtze River Delta, especially in Shanghai. At the same time, it has accelerated the construction of the Rudong food technology industry park and introduced financial services and social capital investment. The park is about to begin construction on three projects valued at more than 300 million yuan and is expecting to land 12 new projects.