China News Service, April 18. According to Hong Kong's Wenhui.com, from Hong Kong, where the land is expensive, it is 2,000 kilometers northeast. Hong Kong youth Wu Zhangzhu chose to take root in the port city of Dalian, which is surrounded by mountains and seas, and started his own entrepreneurial journey.
From the domestic organic wolfberry that sells well in Europe and the United States, to the tuna sashimi made from soybeans, he is engaged in the research and development, cultivation and import and export of high-end agricultural products, relying on mechanized planting bases, modern factories and high-end laboratories. rise.
"Having a functional soybean seed patent will give you an absolute advantage in the future market." Wu Zhangzhu said with confidence.
Wu Zhangzhu, who grew up in Hong Kong, studied for a bachelor's degree in biotechnology and a master's degree in environmental science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and was responsible for market development in the Hong Kong Gene Chip Company and the German Gene Times Testing Laboratory.
Since Dalian is an important port for 'northern grain shipments to the south', almost all export grains from Northeast China must be shipped from Dalian Port. Many of Wu Zhangzhu's customers hope that the inspection and certification of non-GMO export grains will be carried out in Dalian.
Seeing the huge potential market in the mainland, in March 2006, Wu Zhangzhu decided to start his own business and immediately established Huayuan Agriculture (Dalian) Co., Ltd.
Because Wu Zhangzhu's original job was to be responsible for the export inspection of agricultural products, he was familiar with farms, grain and oil companies, and the entire supply chain, so he set the direction of entrepreneurship in agricultural products.
However, Wu Zhangzhu's entrepreneurial journey was not all smooth sailing.
As early as 2002, he tested the waters with his friends and rented 5,000 mu of land to plant soybeans in Zhaodong, Heilongjiang.
Wu Zhangzhu took out his savings of 1 million yuan (RMB, the same below), which he had worked for many years, to provide funds, production materials, machinery, and leased land to local people for management.
However, the results were unexpected.
Over the course of a year, the weeds in the ground actually grew more than soybeans.
The reality that "the grass is full of bean sprouts" not only turned the estimated profit of more than 300,000 yuan into vain, but also made Wu Zhangzhu lose 700,000 yuan.
"Because I am not familiar with the local situation, I have suffered from the loss of no research. The land is saline-alkali land, and the climate is arid, so it is not suitable for soybean cultivation." Fertilizers are smashed into the ground and cannot be seen. The land for hardware is better, and the personnel and management of software must keep up.
After experiencing this painful lesson, Wu Zhangzhu set a company strategic plan for the start-up company to "make money from trade" in the first ten years and "take root in industry" in the next ten years.
At that time, organic food had not yet formed a climate in China, but Wu Zhangzhu saw business opportunities from it.
"The global market for organic food is in strong demand, with an annual growth rate of 15%-20%, much higher than the 3%-5% growth rate of ordinary food. So until 2016, our main focus was on organic food. Development and market channels." Wu Zhangzhu spent ten years, not only looking for organic planting bases all over the country, looking for factories to entrust processing, and selling products abroad, but also setting up branches in Europe and the United States to import foreign agricultural products to the mainland .
Wu Zhangzhu, who has a background in the testing business, is well aware of the decisive role that technology plays in the cultivation of agricultural products.
"The European Union and the United States have strict import standards for organic food. How to ensure that the products we export meet the standards, not just follow other people's planting standards."
Around 2006, wolfberry became popular all over the United States, creating a wave of health preservation from the East. Wu Zhangzhu volunteered to come to Ningxia Agricultural Reclamation and opened up the first organic wolfberry planting experimental field in China.
In order to achieve the breakthrough of "zero" export of domestic wolfberry to Europe and the United States, Wu Zhangzhu specially hired the Swiss Institute of Organic Agriculture as a consultant to transform the cultivation and processing environment of wolfberry in a targeted manner.
It was not until three years later that the exported wolfberry finally met the stringent EU standards.
"If there is a demand in the international market, we will try our best to pool our strength to do it. This is why we have been able to obtain organic certification licenses one after another."