Quicker, Fresher, Tastier! The Rapid Growth of HMR Market! Wait, How About Packaging Waste?

Do you remember when fresh-cut fruits and vegetables were first introduced? These products were considered as representatives that show the values that young generation prioritize the most, efficiency and convenience. Well, now customers go to a mart to purchase cuisine instead of choosing every ingredient. If you can’t find a time to go shopping, a few clicks will deliver delicious HMR foods right to your front door in the early next morning.

What is HMR?

Korea Agro-Fisheries& Food Trade Corporation, hereinafter aT, defined HMR (Home Meal Replacement) as ready-made products that can be served as a decent meal with simple steps of cooking. Depending on the necessity of cooking or heating, products are usually categorized into 3 groups, RTE, RTH, and RTC.

Soaring HMR Market

According to aT’s ‘Report on Segment of Processed Food’, the domestic HMR market size was reported to be 3.4 billion dollars in 2019. It is expected to continuously growing to over 4.1 billion dollars by 2022 and even 8.4 billion dollars by 2023. Then, what is causing the rapid growth?

 Experts consider the increase of single or two person households as one of the main reasons. According to a data, a single-person household numbers 8.77 million covering 39% of the total in Korea and it even goes up to 61.6% if two-person households included. People putting more value on convenience and efficiency and the growing number of women with carrier and the senior citizens also contributed to the growth of the market.

Furthermore, the recognition of HMR products has been greatly changed; while people thought of HMR products as an unhealthy instant food in the past, they now find them as a sanitary, delicious, and nutritious meal. Lately, there introduced RMR, Restaurant Meal Replacement, which allows customers to enjoy the menu of a popular restaurant, expanding its scope and giving more dynamic options.

Gaining popularity, food, catering, retail industries and even the ones in a school meal business jumped into the HMR market with enormous investment. CJ CheilJedang, a major food products manufacturer in Korea, planned to invest 168 million dollars for R&D until this year and Lotte Foods and Ottoki, also major Korean food manufacturers, invested 78 million dollars and 51 million dollars respectively for the production lines. Shinsegae Food, a leading company in a domestic meal service market, and OurHome, specialized in food service in Korea, started to join the business, too.

 

The More Convenient Food Culture, The More Packaging Waste!

Based on the report released by Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency, the amount of products produced from 4,200 companies under EPR system was 1,269,708 tonnes of 2012 and it went up to be 1,553,800 tonnes in 2016. The period matches with the growth of HMR markets in food industry.

According to an article, WeMakePrice, a Korean e-commerce platform, the sales of the products with the keyword ‘HMR’ grew 490.8% compared to the previous month. Market Kurly, an online grocery service company, reported that people paid 50 million dollars over fresh food for the same period, showing 40% increase from the month before. Besides, people prefer the food delivery service to going-out after COVID-19 outbreak. However, we should understand that these figures can also mean the immense consumption of the packaging for food and delivery

To resolve the waste issue, Woowa Brothers, a Korean food-delivery service platform developer, and Korea Franchise Association concluded a voluntary agreement on reducing up to 20% of the plastic consumption for food packaging and delivery by standardizing containers and decreasing the thickness of the containers.

The HMR products, especially, need more packaging items such as cold packs or insulated shipping boxes in order to keep the content fresh and secure during the delivery. The problem is that common cold packs consist of gel, which make them hard to be recycled. With reckless use of Styrofoam boxes and other unnecessary packaging, people became concerned about the packaging waste increased along with the growth of the fresh food market.

Therefore, the companies in the relevant industries have been trying to minimize the environmental burden by attempting a few ways. Market Kurly changed the cold packs to the ones consist of water, and replaced the packaging box material from Styrofoam to paper. SSG.Com provides a reusable insulated box called ‘I’ll be Bag’. Coupang, a Korean online retailer, is running a trial called ‘Rocketfresh Eco’ and provides an insulated box called ‘Freshbag’.

 

However, these services are provided for regular orders only that regular plastic packaging is still used for most of the cases. In addition, it is noted that so-called environment-friendly paper packaging boxes are still coated with PE or aluminum inside that they are hardly recycled. The one from the food industry said, “Every relevant department have been looking for ways for the environmentally friendly packaging, but as it is closely connected to the health safety issue, it may take longer than we all hope for.”

In terms of recycling, food packaging has more obstacles, for they are in direct contact with food leaving foreign materials and tend to use different kinds of plastic for each part of a container.  As it is not allowed to use recycled material for food packaging due to the sanitary issue, it results in wasting more resource. This is why we should take proper measures for the packaging used in the food industries.

 

No Tomorrow Without Actions! From Disposable Waste to Recyclable Resource!

HMR surely is an attractive product, satisfying people’s expectation in convenience and taste. As the major household formation changes and unexpected conditions such as COVID-19 occur more frequently, the market for such products will continuously grow. It is a natural consequence for companies to develop and supply them to keep the pace with the growing needs. Yet, the packaging waste issue became our task to solve in an environmentally friendly way.

On July 28^th, the Ministry of Environment and Korea Meteorological Administration released ‘Korea Climate Change Report 2020’, revealing the potential problems that can be caused by global climate crisis. The report is warning that the growing greenhouse gas emission will lead to the rise in temperature and humidity, increasing the possibilities of zoonoses, water/food-borne infection. A disease used to occur in the tropics may become an endemic in Korea and the coastal area will be inundated because of the sea level rise. We have already experienced many of catastrophes brought from the pollution and abnormal climate such as the massive forest fires in Australia and Siberia, heavy rains in Japan and China, unbearable heat wave in Europe and many others. Wouldn’t they be the last warning messages that the environment sends to us? Shouldn’t we now face our responsibility and put the value on the environment protection before anything else?

The environmental pollution and climate change from our selfish development and thoughtless resource waste boomeranged right back to us, threatening our life. This is a given task that all of us should take responsibility for and work together to resolve. It is the time for us to take an action for disposables and to come up with environment-friendly alternatives from thorough analysis.