Cold-chain development helps mountain goods transform into mountain delicacies
On the summer solstice, Baishan City in Jilin Province enters the hottest season of the year. In the workshop of Hongsheng Food Company beside the Jiangyuan Ring Road in Wushe, Xinhua Village, Chengqiang Subdistrict, Jiangyuan District, machines rumble and cool breezes blow indoors.
Workers on the production line are neatly dressed in work uniforms, and each process - picking vegetables, washing, bagging and packing - unfolds in an orderly way. Some boxes of high-quality, beautifully packaged wild vegetables are moved by forklift to cold storage in batches; others are loaded into containers and sold to all parts of the country……
The landform feature of "nine parts mountain, half part water and half part field" gives Jiangyuan District vast quantities of "mountain delicacies" all over the mountains. In the past, because there were no large professional processing enterprises, wild vegetables, nuts and berry products were large in volume and scattered, and no large-scale storage had taken shape, making it impossible to attract out-of-town merchants to Jiangyuan for procurement. Some were collected and stored by other enterprises in the province, and some were consumed locally. The high added value of "mountain delicacies" had not been developed, and they could only be sold in season. Gao Jinhai, a native of Jiangyuan, saw this and felt anxious.
Having been engaged in the cold drinks and food business for many years, Gao Jinhai saw the strong demand in economically developed areas for green wild vegetables from Northeast China, and Jiangyuan is located in the hinterland of Changbai Mountain, so "mountain delicacies" should be developed into top-grade green, pollution-free commodities. Because wild vegetables have a short market period and are difficult to store, this became the bottleneck in the development of "mountain delicacies". "Low-temperature storage and staggered sales are the key to raising the commodity value of wild vegetables." Therefore, Gao Jinhai's idea of low-temperature storage was born.
Acting without delay, Gao Jinhai built a 10,000-tonne cold storage facility beside the outer ring road in Wushe, Xinhua Village. The completion of his Hongsheng Company's refrigerated quick-freezing project was widely expected to drive the comprehensive economic development of Jiangyuan District.
The cold storage solved the difficulty of storing wild vegetables, but the problem of difficult sales and transport then confronted Gao Jinhai. In the past, Jiangyuan's mountain delicacy specialties relied on mountain goods shop stores for sales, and were basically dried goods, with no fresh goods. As people's living standards improve and the market's concept of healthy food develops, fresh quick-frozen wild vegetable commodities are increasingly sought after. Preserved fresh wild vegetables require full cold-chain transport, which has become the key difficulty in shipping wild vegetables out.
There are always more solutions than difficulties. On the one hand, Gao Jinhai gave play to his advantages in cold storage and refrigerated truck transport; on the other hand, he looked nationwide for partners in the cold drinks and quick-freezing logistics industry. In this way, relying on large-scale refrigeration, full cold-chain transport and cold-chain logistics industry sales, Hongsheng Company gradually pushed Jiangyuan's quick-frozen preserved mountain delicacies continuously into markets across the country.
At present, Hongsheng Food is actively cooperating with experts from Jilin Agricultural University to research and develop new products of Changbai Mountain characteristic wild vegetables, berries and nuts, deeply tap the economic and nutritional value of Jiangyuan mountain delicacies, focus on highlighting the characteristics of Changbai Mountain forest foods, and gradually build a logistics center area for Jiangyuan mountain delicacy foods. The emergence of Hongsheng Food Company, this large mountain delicacy cold storage and sales enterprise, is a major benefit to farmers around Jiangyuan District, as it has driven industries such as mountain delicacy picking, processing and artificial cultivation. Through "Internet Plus" and Jiangyuan's rural e-commerce platform, it develops and sells the treasures in the mountains.
Yuan Cheng and Li Guangyou, excerpted from "Jilin Daily"