In late autumn, walking into the Yamei Tea Oil Intelligent Industrial Park in You County, Hunan, the hometown of Chinese tea oil, is like entering a tea oil "kingdom".
The agricultural culture exhibition area, tea oil product experience area, special catering, leisure facilities, etc. are all available. Visitors can also visit the entire process of tea oil production through the transparent factory.
From a traditional oil press to a modern tea oil enterprise integrating the development of the first, second and third industries, the gorgeous transformation of Hunan Yamei Tea Oil Co., Ltd. has handed in a wonderful answer to how far the leading agricultural enterprises can go.
From "selling products" to "selling scenery", let consumers come in on their own initiative. You County is known as the "hometown of oil tea". It is a national standardization demonstration county for oil tea and a key county for the development of the oil tea industry. In 2011, Yamei Oil Tea started with difficulty, and many of its peers have been "struggling" for many years. Cultivating the oil tea industry requires large investments and slow results. How to occupy a place in the market? Hou Xirong, chairman of Yamei Oil Tea, has a clear idea: increase investment in scientific and technological innovation and make high-quality tea oil. After entering the You County High-tech Industrial Park in 2014, Yamei Oil Tea established the Oil Tea Engineering Technology Research Center, invested 300 million yuan, and built an automated production line with an annual processing capacity of 600,000 tons of fresh oil tea fruit, an annual processing capacity of 24,000 tons of refined tea oil production line, and a 6,000-ton oil storage tank. It has jointly established the Joint Research and Development Center for High-value Resources of Biomass and the National Key Laboratory for Utilization of Woody Oil Resources·Yamei Camellia Oil Joint Laboratory with Changsha University of Science and Technology and Hunan Academy of Forestry Sciences to develop low-temperature cold pressing technology for tea seed oil. Winning by quality, Yamei Camellia Oil has made a name for itself in the industry and has been selected as one of the top ten camellia oil processing companies in the country for 10 consecutive years. Its products are sold in nearly 10,000 stores in 18 provinces and cities.
Hou Xirong began to get anxious. Looking at the domestic oil tea industry, all kinds of companies have "grown wildly", resulting in overcapacity, poor quality, and serious competition among homogeneous products. In order to build core competitive advantages in the oil tea field and become an industry leader, efforts must be made in technology, brand, and industrial chain integration. At this time, Yamei Oil Tea's annual revenue has exceeded 400 million yuan. Hou Xirong found that it was difficult to improve the quality and efficiency of oil tea products produced and sold according to the existing model, and the dilemma needed to be broken through. "In addition to comparing products, we must also compare services and innovations. It is difficult to achieve greater results with an unchanging development model." Hou Xirong went to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to investigate and think about the path of transformation and upgrading of agricultural enterprises.
You County vigorously promotes the integrated development of agriculture, tourism and consumption, providing a new opportunity for Yamei Oil Tea. From the perspective of location, Yamei Oil Tea is located in the "west" of You County, only about 3 hours' drive from Changsha city, and only about 2 hours' drive from Zhuzhou and Hengyang city, with sufficient customer sources; the You County High-tech Zone where it is located has a high concentration of large-scale enterprises and a large flow of people, but there is no high-quality comprehensive consumer service platform; it is only 1 kilometer away from the Xinshui River, and there are rich ecological and cultural tourism resources along the river... Promoting the integration of agriculture, culture and tourism has unique advantages. "Selling products" is not as good as "selling scenery"! Hou Xirong is determined to create a new business model integrating agricultural cultivation, industrial production, and consumer services, so that consumers can take the initiative to come in and drive products out.
