Visitors check out ready-to-eat meals during a precooked dish expo in Jinan, Shandong province, in March. ZHANG ZHENXIANG/FOR CHINA DAILY

Taking prefabricated dishes as the key to promoting the high-quality development of rural industries, Jiaozhou city in East China's Shandong province is ramping up efforts to extend its agricultural industrial chain, cultivate leading enterprises, and inject new momentum into its rural vitalization efforts.

Prefabricated food, which is convenient to store and can be easily consumed, have been favored by consumers in recent years.

At Qingdao Fuchang Food Technology Co Ltd, workers carry out tasks in the prefabricated food production, such as selecting, weighing and arranging dishes.

Liu Zeyou, assistant general manager of the company, said, "We have developed seven categories and 15 production units in the prefabricated food industry, with more than 400 varieties of daily processed products."

Currently, Jiaozhou is home to more than 70 prefabricated food companies. Prefabricated food enterprises are attracted to settle in Jiaozhou because of its superior natural conditions and characteristic agricultural products. The city also boasts a large-scale agricultural product processing industry and an advanced transport system, which includes sea, land, air, rail and postal services.

Jiaozhou is set to create a prefabricated food industrial cluster that integrates production, processing, R&D, sales, cold chain logistics, and other functions.