After investigation and research, Yihai Kerry Group (Arawana) invested heavily in developing domestic rice noodle market. In the earlier stage, it has selected the two production projects of straight rice noodle production line whose market prospect is promising and the rice wave noodle production line with relatively high productivity. Yihai Kerry has understood during the investigation that currently straight rice noodle is a main product of Chinese rice noodle products, which occupies a wide market both at home and abroad.
Since the reform and opening up, the production technologies and production equipment of straight rice noodles have been improved. But generally, this kind of production mode did not get rid of intensive labor force. 10~15 workers should spend one day for each ton of products (including packaging). Many processes are with great labour intensity and the working environment is very awful. Young people who are born after 80s are not willing to be engaged in frontline working, which causes the difficulty of recruitment. However, in order to take a share in the domestic and overseas markets, labor cost must be reduced, production efficiency should be improved and the products should be safety, healthy and high-quality, thus a highly automatic straight rice noodle production line is a must.
Another project is to produce rice wave noodles. Such kind of rice wave noodle is one of Chineses traditional noodles. Many overseas Chinese show special preference to rice wave noodles, whose appearance is more like instant rice noodles and more easy for consumers to accept. They can be cooked, fried as instant noodles but they are healthier than instant noodles because they are non-fried products, and they are more tough and chewy. However, currently the degree of gelatinization of this kind of product is not high and it is easy to paste the soup and easy to stick while frying. In order to overcome these weaknesses, the purchased production line needs innovation. Thus Yihai Kerry came to Kennyway for only Kennyway can undertake this heavy task of manuafacturing continuous and automatic rice wave noodle production line.
At the end of 2013, Kennyway manufactured three automatic and continuous production lines for Yihai Kerry, which have been put into production in the first half year of 2014.