Zhongtai: Policies drive the rapid expansion of clean soy sauce, benefiting from the differentiation of consumption trends.

Zhongtai released a research report stating that the soy sauce industry is facing dual opportunities and challenges of diversified consumer demands and highly fragmented channels. On the demand side, attention is focused on attributes such as real ingredients, health, and convenience. Companies are actively transforming with "quality reconstruction" as a keyword, with "clean ingredients" soy sauce becoming the core engine driving the upgrade of soy sauce quality and sustained consumer growth. This consumer trend differentiation phenomenon may benefit companies with existing technological reserves and flexible response capabilities, possessing omni-channel layout capabilities and implementing differentiated precision strategies tailored to different channel characteristics. Zhongtai's main points are as follows: Policy guidance, clean soy sauce rapidly expanding Soy sauce, as a mature category in the condiment industry, has entered a mature stage, with a moderate and slow expansion of the market size at an average annual growth rate of 2-5%. Since 2025, multiple clean labels, key policies related to food additives, standards have been introduced and landed. From the policy orientation, it can be seen that the soy sauce industry is moving towards a stage of high-quality development emphasizing standardized standards, priority to quality, and improved standardization, promoting the rapid expansion of clean ingredient soy sauce. According to Ipsos' estimation, clean ingredient soy sauce has maintained double-digit growth in recent years, with the market size reaching 2.6 billion yuan in 2024, and a CAGR of 23.67% from 2022 to 2024. In the next three years, in the retail market of quality soy sauce, it is expected that clean ingredient soy sauce will account for 63.9%, with top brands occupying half of the market share. Development trend 1) Supply side: Product iteration upgrades, channel support forming a virtuous cycle. Haitian rigorously controls the stability of product flavors and quality, with production and sales volume ranking first in the country for several decades. Core billion-level products such as Gold Label light soy sauce, Shii-take mushroom dark soy sauce, extremely umami soy sauce form a solid foundation. On top of the stable base, the company has launched healthy series such as low-salt, organic, follow market trends with products like Matsutake super soy sauce, and special adjustment series soy sauce tailored to specific dietary needs such as iron-fortified, selenium-rich, gluten-free. The company, with deep channels and brand recognition, slices the soy sauce market into countless segmentation markets with specific demands that are willing to pay a premium for different values, providing consumers with a "product spectrum" that meets multidimensional needs; Qianhe obtained the Clean Label 0 certification for its Qianhe 0 series soy sauce from the China Quality Certification Center on October 31, 2025, and boldly tried moving the ingredient list from the back of the bottle to the front, clearly stating that the Qianhe 0 series soy sauce only uses 4-5 basic ingredients, truly achieving "clean ingredients, no additives", to restore consumer trust and lead the trend of quality consumption. On the channel side, Tmall supermarket provides traffic support for products certified with clean labels, high-quality products are expected to receive more exposure, helping brands to improve their formulas with more motivation to form a positive cycle of production and sales. 2) Demand side: Different lifestyles, common pursuit of quality and health. According to Ipsos' report on the development and trends of clean ingredient soy sauce categories, consumers of healthy soy sauce have wide-ranging preferences. Based on the strictness of health requirements and cooking levels, the report divides the target consumer groups into three categories: health-focused, flavor-priority, and healthy foodies, each showing distinct differences in consumption demands and habits, but all showing a close attention to ingredient lists and the functionality of soy sauce. Risk warning: Weak consumer demand, new product turnover less than expected, food safety risks, delayed update of research report information, distortion of third-party data, and deviation in market size estimation.