Chenpi commands a high price while Xinhui mandarin flesh is discarded: how to turn waste into treasure

Editor's note: Comprehensive utilization of agricultural products and processing by-products is an important topic in the field of agricultural product processing. At present, China's level of comprehensive utilization of agricultural products and processing by-products remains very low. The extensive use of agricultural product by-products, the low-value use of processing by-products, and the arbitrary discharge of processing waste have caused resource waste, loss of benefits, reduced income, and environmental pollution, seriously affecting the sustainable development of agriculture. Greatly raising the level of comprehensive utilization of agricultural products and processing by-products is of extremely important significance for increasing the effective supply of agricultural products, guiding agriculture to transform its development mode and adjust its structure, promoting farmers' employment and income growth, and enhancing agricultural value and efficiency.

Walking through the streets of Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, in mid-autumn, a faint medicinal fragrance drifts into the nostrils. The densely scattered chenpi shops are precisely the source of this smell. Like many peers, at the flagship store of Xinbaotang Chenpi Co., Ltd. on Qiaoguang North Road, staff members are busy packing and shipping out gift boxes of chenpi stacked into small hills.

However, what is currently taxing the mind of "Xinbaotang" chairman Chen Baizhong is not the expansion of e-commerce channels, but how to execute brilliantly on another blueprint that has just begun to unfold. In April this year, Xinbaotang reached an industry-university-research cooperation agreement with Wuyi University Lies in Jiangmen, working together to tackle comprehensive utilization technology and in-depth development strategies for Xinhui mandarin flesh. "Entering the new century, we are the first, and so far the only, company willing to gnaw on this 'chicken rib' of mandarin flesh processing," said Chen Baizhong.

250,000 tons of mandarin flesh are discarded every year, polluting the environment and becoming a burden on enterprises

For ordinary citrus, people eat the flesh and discard the peel; but for Xinhui mandarin, "keeping the peel and discarding the flesh" has become the norm in utilization and processing. So-called chenpi is a medicinal material made from Xinhui mandarins with the flesh and seeds removed, through complex procedures such as sun-drying and storage.

Although as early as 2006, Xinhui chenpi and Xinhui mandarin both won geographical indications for agricultural products, on the track of industrialization and branding, their pace of progress has been completely out of step, and their respective values today are worlds apart. In 2013, 100 grams of "Chenpi Emperor" stored for 73 years sold for 125,000 yuan, but Xinhui mandarins cost only three or four yuan per jin, and the peeled flesh became worthless waste that nobody wanted.

Although the peak season for harvesting and processing Xinhui mandarins has not yet arrived at the end of the year, in some villages around the Xinhui urban area, this reporter still found mandarin flesh randomly piled beside roads and in ditches. Under the scorching sun, the sour and rotten smell from the mandarin flesh attracted buzzing flies. Many villagers had long since ceased to find this strange. "The flesh does not taste very good, and after peeling it spoils easily, and it cannot be sold even if taken to market," one mandarin farmer said helplessly.

"Calculating on the basis that Xinhui mandarins currently have a planting area of 70,000 mu and each mu produces 2 tons of mandarin flesh per year, about 140,000 tons of mandarin flesh become garbage every year," said Chen Baizhong. This is only based on the planting scale within Xinhui District, he added. "If one takes into account that the 'Guang chenpi' mandarins grown in Zhaoqing, Shaoguan, Huizhou, and other counties and districts of Jiangmen are also concentrated in Xinhui for processing and transshipment, then about 250,000 tons of mandarin flesh are discarded every year."

For many chenpi enterprises in Xinhui, when the production peak arrives, they not only have to find ways to find a destination for the large amount of mandarin flesh produced by processing, but also have to pay sanitation departments 30 to 50 yuan per truck to haul the mandarin flesh away. "For some small and medium-sized chenpi enterprises, the expenditure on collecting, transporting, and treating mandarin flesh every year is also a considerable burden," said Chen Baizhong.

The early path of juice processing did not work; industrial transformation must rely on comprehensive utilization

In Xinhui, the chenpi industry has accumulated more than 600 years. In modern times, there has been no shortage of people who set their eyes on mandarin flesh, trying to turn waste into treasure and dig another "bucket of gold" from the chenpi industry, yet often the efforts came to nothing.

The most recent effort appeared in the 1980s. The sudden emergence of a juice factory once made people believe that Xinhui mandarin flesh could escape its fate from branch to ditch. And the virtually zero raw material cost also led many people to place high hopes on this factory. However, because the process was relatively simple, the inherently sour and astringent nature of Xinhui mandarin flesh did not disappear with the roar of the press. And because the product had "shortcomings" in taste, marketing, and other aspects, the mandarin flesh juice factory closed after only a few short years. After the brief clamor of mandarin flesh processing, the Xinhui chenpi industry once again returned to its traditional path.

In Chen Baizhong's view, the impulse to process mandarin flesh into juice came more directly from the surge in Xinhui mandarin planting area brought by the prosperity of the chenpi industry at that time. "At that time, Xinhui alone had 200,000 mu of mandarin orchards, about three times the current amount," said Chen Baizhong. A large surplus of mandarin flesh naturally brought up the topic of deep processing. "However, if the only approach is to press mandarin flesh into juice as a way to break through the predicament, that is obviously 'seeking any doctor when gravely ill.'"

Chen Baizhong bears two titles: provincial-level inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Xinhui chenpi-making techniques, and fourth-generation head of a century-old chenpi time-honored brand. These are both a halo and a heavy burden. It is precisely this profound sense of responsibility that ultimately determined his resolve to break through the key bottleneck restricting the transformation and upgrading of the chenpi industry: the processing and utilization of Xinhui mandarin flesh.

Integrating into the health industry cluster, seeking breakthroughs by processing organic fertilizer and enzyme products

What attracted Chen Baizhong to deep processing of Xinhui mandarin flesh was not the low raw material cost. The "prescription" he wrote was "biotechnology, health industry."

In 2013, Xinbaotang invested 450,000 yuan and commissioned the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University to carry out chenpi research and analyze the pharmacological components of mandarin flesh and seeds. Research showed that compared with other edible citrus, Xinhui mandarin flesh, apart from having a slightly poorer taste, lacks none of the other nutritional and health components, and in some indicators such as amino acids and vitamins it is even slightly superior, making it very suitable for developing functional beverages.

At the key industry project promotion meeting held in Jiangmen City in April this year, the project "Research, Development and Application Demonstration of Comprehensive Utilization Technology for Xinhui Chenpi Processing Waste," jointly created by Xinbaotang and Wuyi University, became one of the important members of the "Great Health Industry Cluster." According to the cooperation agreement, both sides strive to achieve breakthrough progress in converting mandarin flesh into agricultural-grade organic fertilizer and food-grade enzyme products.

In the eyes of Huang Ruilou, deputy head of Xinhui District, this project will solve the long-standing local problems of wasted discarded mandarin flesh and environmental pollution. According to Chen Baizhong's estimate, what this project will bring to the chenpi industry will be an expected output value of as much as 7 billion yuan.

At the same time, with the renewed breakthrough in mandarin flesh utilization, Xinbaotang, which had already hit the ceiling in the traditional chenpi industry, is "fermenting." In January 2016, with the establishment of Guangdong Xinbaotang Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Chen Baizhong is transforming from a medicine merchant into a trendsetter in the modern biological industry.

"The total investment in the Xinhui mandarin flesh comprehensive utilization project is 380 million yuan, the plant covers an area of 83,000 sq m, and the enzymes can go into production this year." In Chen Baizhong's vision, both products will serve as independent sub-brands of Xinbaotang, embedded in the modern health industry chain of Xinhui chenpi supported by the model of "high technology + wellness culture + tourism," "thereby achieving the use of the peel to drive the flesh in industrial branding, and the use of the flesh to nourish the peel in industrial diversification."

In Chen Baizhong's eyes, the research and development stage is still the biggest bottleneck. In addition to enzyme and fertilizer production, the mechanical separation technology for flesh and seeds also needs continuous improvement. In the medicinal materials market, the price of mandarin seeds has already reached 5,000 to 8,000 yuan per ton, and once large-scale mass production and processing are achieved, the seeds can complete a magnificent transformation from waste to traditional Chinese medicine decoction pieces and functional foods.