Sustainable and efficient biotechnological processes have been increasingly used to produce functional food ingredients instead of traditional food processing technologies. How to produce various functional food ingredients in a cost-effective way is a crucial challenge for food scientists. To share knowledge and information in the area of functional food processing and application, the first Chinese-German Symposium was held on 11–15 September 2018 in Stuttgart (Germany). To further strengthen and broaden the collaboration between China and Germany, a second Chinese-German Symposium was held on 15–17 November 2019 in Wuxi (China). The researchers with varying but overlapping sets of expertise in food science from these two countries gathered. The symposium resulted in exchange of ideas and new collaborations. This report summarizes the oral lectures presented and concludes with an outlook for future cooperation.