Instant noodles steaming back to life

This growth continues. Figures from data analytics company Nielsen show that in the first six months of this year, instant noodle sales in China rose by 7.5 percent year-on-year.

However, just four years ago, the industry was hit by a recession. Sales started falling in 2015, falling to 38.52 billion units the following year, according to the association.

Shao said that during this time, the industry faced a direct challenge from booming online food delivery services.

"To gain and maintain consumers, online food delivery platforms offered discounts, enabling customers to buy a meal for about 10 to 20 yuan ($1.42 to $2.85)," he said. "Many consumers then started to choose online food deliveries over instant noodles."

Figures from Meituan Research Institute, an organization with online food delivery and ticketing services platform Meituan Dianping, show that the online food delivery market in 2017 was worth about 204.6 billion yuan, a rise of 23 percent year-on-year.

According to research by the School of Economics and Management at the China University of Geosciences, when the online food delivery market grows by 1 percent, consumption of instant noodles falls by about 0.05 percent.

With discounts significantly reduced in the past year, the online food delivery market has slowed, with some consumers switching back to buying instant noodles, Shao said.

But more important, he said many instant noodle makers have made great efforts to improve the taste of their products and promote healthier recipes and more innovative cooking techniques, which have become popular among customers.