Small Walnuts Carry Hui Taiji's Entrepreneurial Dream
Hui Taiji, a farmer from Pengyang, has always wanted to start a business.
"After years of making a living away from home, all I hoped for was to find a project that could lift me out of poverty and make me rich." Having worked in Zhengzhou, Xi'an and Pengyang for more than ten years, Hui Taiji never dared tell anyone about this idea, for fear of being laughed at.
Where there is a will, there is a way, and the opportunity came.
One day in April 2015, at a market in Xi'an he saw merchants selling walnut oil and almond oil, with quite a lot of buyers. He joined the crowd and bought two small bottles.
Hey! Pengyang is covered with apricot trees, and there are plenty of walnuts too - what abundant raw materials! Tasting the mellow fragrance of the walnut oil, Hui Taiji made up his mind.
He could hardly wait to return to Pengyang to start a business producing and selling walnut oil and almond oil.
Because he lacked funds, he went to Hu Zhiqi, a relative in business, and proposed going into partnership together.
Hu Zhiqi thought the project was a good one, and the two hit it off immediately. They travelled to Xi'an, Yan'an and other places to survey the market, pooled more than 400,000 yuan, and went to Beijing to buy equipment for pressing walnut oil and almond oil.
In September of that year, they registered a food processing company in Pengyang, bought up local apricot kernels and walnuts from Pengyang on a large scale, and began production in November.
Hui Taiji first made some trial samples. Pale yellow in colour with a mellow fragrance, they were in no way inferior to the walnut oil and almond oil sold on the Xi'an market - which gave him the confidence to open up the market.
In order to open up the market, Hui Taiji learned a great deal of professional knowledge about edible oils. "Walnut kernels contain many trace elements and minerals essential to the human body, such as calcium, phosphorus and iron, as well as various vitamins such as carotene and riboflavin. Walnut oil is a vegetable oil pressed from walnut kernels as the raw material..." In the process of learning, producing and selling, this man of peasant origin gradually became a "local expert".
Hui Taiji adopted a "sell first, pay later" strategy, delivering goods to the door and only collecting payment according to quantity after the merchant had sold them. At the same time, he set his sights on restaurants, schools and kindergartens, promoting the health benefits of walnut oil and almond oil. A marketing strategy suited to the market and the good quality of the oils helped him quickly open up the Pengyang market. Since this year, he has had more than 50 sales outlets in surrounding counties and cities, and also supplies many online shops selling local specialities. His products sell well both online and offline, with more than 2,000 kg of edible oil produced and processed every day.
Hui Taiji is not content with selling walnut oil and almond oil only around Pengyang. He actively takes part in various national investment and trade fairs for agricultural and sideline products, striving to bring "Pengyang-brand" plant edible oils to the national market.
Hui Taiji, who comes from a peasant background, now thinks most about how to help poor households escape poverty and become rich within his means. He buys raw materials such as walnuts, apricot kernels and flax from poor households at above-market prices, recruits poor households to the company for training and work, and adopts a "company + cooperative + poor households" model to help poor households develop farming and sideline businesses and increase their incomes.
At present, Hui Taiji's original two production lines can no longer meet market demand. The Pengyang County Industrial Park has provided him with a standard industrial workshop of 2,000 sq m to support him in expanding production.
"I'm preparing to add two new production lines, one for flaxseed oil and one for walnut oil and almond oil." On 10 November, Hui Taiji said the company wants to achieve large-scale production and strive to employ more poor households to work near their homes.