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Nongshim, South Korea’s leading instant noodle maker, says it is accelerating overseas expansion as its ramen products benefit from the growing popularity of Korean culture in countries such as the US.
Instant noodles have grown into a $50bn industry, with South Korea’s exports of the product hitting a record $1bn last year. Nongshim’s most popular spicy noodle product, Shin Ramyun, posted record sales of Won1.2tn ($900mn) in 2023, with nearly 60 per cent coming from abroad. Nongshim has set a target of tripling annual sales in the US to $1.5bn to become the biggest instant noodle maker in the market by 2030.
Western interest in Korean food has grown with the rise of K-pop, South Korean movies and dramas. The Oscar-winning movie Parasite elevated the dish nicknamed Chapaguri — a blend of Nongshim’s black bean-flavoured Chapagetti and its seafood-based Neoguri. The Covid-19 pandemic also helped drive a global boom in sales of instant noodles as a fast, tasty and affordable meal at home.
“It used to be mostly Asians who enjoyed ramen, but nowadays, local people in the US and Hispanics have become main consumers of ramen as more young people there try spicy food,” said Yongjae Lee, Nongshim’s executive vice-president in charge of international sales.
Nongshim’s biggest overseas market is in the US, where it is the second-biggest player with a 25.4 per cent market share, behind Japan’s Toyo Suisan Kaisha, which has nearly half of the US market, according to Euromonitor International.
Nongshim’s sales in North America, where its products can be found at major retailers such as Costco and Walmart, rose 10 per cent to $538mn last year. An explosion in the popularity of South Korean rival Samyang’s super-spicy Buldak “fire chicken” noodles has also contributed to the ramen boom in the US, more than doubling Samyang’s stock price this year.
Lee said the company’s high-end strategy with the premium Shin Ramyun Black had worked, with Americans warming to its spicy broth with a meaty taste and chewy noodles. “Our products there are two to three times more expensive than our rivals’ but many consumers favour our products because ours are more delicious,” he said.
He expected US sales to jump this year as Walmart moved Shin Ramyun from its niche Asian grocery corner to the mainstream food section, which had a “great symbolic meaning”.
To meet surging demand, Nongshim is adding new production lines to its second plant in Los Angeles, which came online in May 2022. It is also considering construction of a third plant in the US and a domestic facility dedicated to exports. Nongshim currently has five overseas noodle plants — two in the US and three in China — and five plants in South Korea.
Sales in China have been stalling due to the slow growth of the Chinese economy and the rise of local competitors. Nongshim has also been turning to the European market and plans to set up a sales subsidiary there next year. This comes after Shin Ramyun gained popularity in the UK and Germany, driving up sales in the region more than 30 per cent in the first quarter.
“Europe is a tough market to crack due to Europeans’ pride in their cuisine, their negative perception of ramen as junk food and the region’s strict import regulations,” Lee said.
But he expects European sales to increase by a third to $80mn this year as Nongshim plans a marketing campaign in Paris during the Olympics in July.
Sunny Moon, a research manager at Euromonitor, cautioned that Europeans remained resistant to spicy food, while Americans had embraced instant noodles as a comforting daily meal.
“Unlike in the US, Europeans remain conservative about food and don’t enjoy hot food,” she said, “so it is hard to expect a ramen boom in Europe any time soon.”
