More than a decade ago, blueberries were famous for their high prices in the country, with one kilogram selling for hundreds of yuan.

　　In Xiong Weihua’s memory, the blueberries on the market at that time were mainly imported, domestic planting technology was immature, the varieties were relatively old, most of the growers were individual investors, the yield was low and the quality was unstable.

　　Today, China has become the world’s largest blueberry producer. According to Yunnan.com data, China’s blueberry planting area in 2023 has reached nearly 1.155 million mu, with an annual output of 525,000 tons.

　　Blueberries are no longer expensive in China. On major platforms, you can buy one kilogram for just a few dozen yuan. Not only are fresh blueberries popular with consumers, but blueberry desserts and blueberry juices have also become the “top sellers” in the market.

　　Over the past seven years, Xiong Weihua has witnessed the blueberry planting area in Yunnan grow from a few thousand acres to hundreds of thousands of acres. He has also gone from planting ordinary blueberries to continuously developing blueberries with various unique flavors such as floral, peach, banana, etc., constantly innovating in the blueberry market.

　　Today, Xiong Weihua’s company’s blueberry category has an annual sales volume of over 40 million yuan. He also worked with Dingdong Maicai to develop flavored blueberries that better suit the tastes of platform consumers, with a user favorable rating of over 96%, and they are often sold out soon after they are put on the shelves.

　　Blueberry grower

　　We have heard many stories about the fruit industry. College students who returned home sold the once unsaleable fruits in their hometown to all parts of the country through e-commerce; after a video shot by a rural mother became popular on the Internet, more than 100,000 tons of fruit were sold in a month; farmers in the mountains picked up their mobile phones to record their stories and found ways to sell their fruits in the live broadcast room.

　　Xiong Weihua is more like the other side of these stories that are rarely mentioned. He is the one who grows the fruit. To be more precise, he is the one who develops new varieties and carries out large-scale production. Unlike those who accidentally seized the e-commerce opportunity to change their fate, Xiong Weihua saw the opportunity of the development of the times and seized the opportunity in the tide of the times. He not only changed himself, but also affected the Chinese blueberry market.

　　More than a decade ago, Xiong Weihua, who was still working for a European and American company, discovered that although China was not short of fruit, compared with the mature and standardized fruit markets in Europe and the United States, most of the domestic fruit was grown by individual farmers. At the same time, there were many problems, such as food safety, non-standard product quality, and difficulty in scale.

　　”But at that time, China’s offline supermarkets and online e-commerce were developing rapidly, and the fruit market was in urgent need of a stable and standard supply of products. We believed that China’s agricultural sector would definitely see the emergence of large companies specializing in fruit like Zespri,” Xiong Weihua recalled.

　　So in 2012, 33-year-old Xiong Weihua resigned from his position as a senior executive of a listed company and started breeding melons and other fruits. At first, he chose watermelons and tomatoes, which were popular among domestic consumers.

　　In the process of cultivating fruits and vegetables, he explored a complete set of standardized cultivation processes and summed up a lot of experience. For example, the research and development of varieties is the most important link in the entire agricultural production process. It may take 5-6 years from research and development to formal commercialization, so you must be careful in choosing varieties. The more unique the variety, the better.

　　Another example is personnel management. If you want to carry out large-scale production, you must hire people to manage it. Most fruit farmers have weak organizational concepts, which easily leads to problems, and regular personnel training and management are needed.

　　The most important and challenging link is the balance between channels and scale. If the channels are laid out but production does not keep up, there will be large-scale shortages. If production increases but channels do not keep up, products will be unsalable. Therefore, we must find a balance between scale and channel construction.

　　In 2017, Xiong Weihua decided to apply this process to blueberries. At that time, he found that a leading international blueberry company brought the soilless cultivation technology of blueberries to China. He judged this as an opportunity, so he worked hard to become a partner of the company and became one of the first people in China to participate in soilless cultivation of blueberries.

　　You should know that at that time, domestic blueberries were mainly cultivated in soil, which was not only subject to large geographical restrictions, but also easily affected by natural conditions such as climate and temperature, resulting in slow growth, reduced yields, and unguaranteed quality of blueberries. Soilless cultivation perfectly solves these problems, and can also create an environment suitable for blueberry growth based on scientific plans to better develop the potential of the plants.

　　Today, China’s blueberry soilless cultivation technology has become one of the most advanced in the world. Xiong Weihua has also witnessed the blueberry planting area in Yunnan increase from a few thousand acres at that time to hundreds of thousands of acres now.

　　Taking the difficult road

　　In Xiong Weihua’s memory, when blueberries were first planted, the main planting areas in China were still in the north. The varieties were generally sour and not suitable for sale as fresh fruit. Most of them were processed into frozen fruit, jam, etc.

　　So when this leading international blueberry company used soilless cultivation technology in Yunnan to grow large, crispy, sweet blueberries, the market soon faced a shortage of supply. “At that time, there were not many people growing blueberries in Yunnan, only a few dozen, and those who first grew blueberries became rich.”

　　Later, Yunnan’s blueberries attracted more and more attention, and more and more people started growing blueberries locally. This not only promoted the rapid expansion of blueberry planting technology in the local area, but also promoted the research and development of new blueberry varieties.

　　Before 2021, Xiong Weihua had always played the role of a grower. When the harvest season came, all blueberries were sold uniformly by this international leading blueberry company. The advantage of this approach was that he did not need to worry about the sales of blueberries, but it also meant that he did not have much autonomy.

　　So in 2021, Xiong Weihua decided to do it himself, grow blueberries himself, introduce new and different varieties, and sell them himself. At that time, more and more people were growing blueberries in Yunnan. “When competition becomes more and more fierce, your differentiation will become particularly important. But breeding is a very expensive and time-consuming job. It may take several years from introducing mother plants to sending them to greenhouses for commercial cultivation.”

　　Therefore, most blueberry growers choose stable and mature varieties for large-scale planting to quickly recoup their investment, which also leads to increasingly fierce homogeneous competition in the market. After thinking it through, Xiong Weihua decisively chose the difficult path and continued to develop new varieties to differentiate them from mature varieties on the market, using differentiation to improve his own competitiveness.

　　In Xiong Weihua’s opinion, compared with ordinary fast-moving consumer goods, the industry chain of fresh fruit is longer, from front-end agricultural planting to terminal sales, spanning the three major industries of agriculture, logistics, and retail. It has obvious heavy asset attributes and is not an industry that “makes quick money.” But it is precisely because of this that this industry also provides opportunities for these pragmatic fruit companies that practice long-termism.

　　This year, Xiong Weihua’s hundreds of acres of blueberry production land are all new varieties. Although the yield in previous years is not as high as that of mature varieties, it is easier to sell. Moreover, after cooperating with the fresh food platform “Dingdong Maicai”, Xiong Weihua also developed the most suitable blueberries for platform users based on user portraits, information preferences and other data information on the platform, such as the size, crispness and sweetness of blueberries, with a favorable rating of 96.83%.

　　Nowadays, in addition to crispness and sweetness, flavor has also become a focus of Xiong Weihua and his team. The team is not only developing blueberries with floral scents, but also blueberries with fruity scents such as “peach” and “banana”. “Since competition is unavoidable, let’s innovate in flavor.”

　　Selling Chinese blueberries to the world

　　It took China more than 30 years to go from being a relatively unknown country to the world’s largest blueberry producer. In 2023, China’s blueberry planting area will be close to 1.155 million mu, with an annual output of 525,000 tons.

　　Moreover, with the increase in domestic blueberry production and the continuous improvement in quality, the export share of domestic blueberries is also expanding. According to customs data, blueberry exports will see explosive growth in 2024. The export volume in January-August alone will reach 2,314 tons, with an export value of US$21.98 million. The export volume will exceed twice that of the whole year of 2023 and 20 times that of 2020.

　　Xiong Weihua plans to sell more than 20% of his blueberries to Japan, Singapore and other countries overseas this year. In his opinion, the domestic blueberry production capacity has increased significantly in recent years, the quality is good, and the cost advantage is obvious; secondly, the loss of blueberries during transportation is a very large cost, and shipping from China to Southeast Asia and the Middle East is the most cost-effective.

　　More importantly, the cold chain transportation path for blueberries has reached a very mature level in China. Since the post-harvest life cycle of blueberries is limited, if the transportation is not handled properly, the quality of blueberries will be affected when they reach consumers. In the domestic market, it takes only 48 hours at the fastest from Xiong Weihua’s blueberry farm in Yunnan to the hands of Dingdong Maicai consumers.

　　”There is a cold storage area in every area of ​​the farm. The fruits will enter the cold storage area 10-20 minutes after being picked, and then be transported to Dingdong Maicai’s main warehouse by refrigerated trucks, put on the platform, and delivered to consumers by riders.” Xiong Weihua told us.

　　”In the past decade or so, not only has the quality of blueberries improved, but the cold chain transportation routes have also become very mature. On the other hand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and other countries and regions in the Middle East are in the same situation as China was 20 or 30 years ago. Therefore, China’s high-quality blueberries and supporting cold chain transportation technology are very competitive in these markets.”

　　As the Spring Festival approaches, Xiong Weihua is at his busiest again. “On the farm, there are hundreds of workers harvesting every day. From a distance, it looks like a sea of ​​people.”

　　In addition to investigating overseas markets, the sales peak period for Yunnan blueberries is around the Spring Festival. The market demand for fruit is high around the Spring Festival, and there is less fruit in winter. Therefore, during this period, Yunnan blueberries are not only highly competitive, but also have less market pressure.

　　Whenever he thinks back on it, Xiong Weihua finds it amazing. When he first started his business, most of the fruit in China was still grown by individual farmers, and high-quality blueberries were mainly imported. Now, China has formed several major production areas in different production seasons. Not only are the varieties getting better and better, but the upstream and downstream supply chains are also becoming more mature. Not only are they popular in China, but they are also popular around the world.

　　In the future, Xiong Weihua hopes to develop more blueberry varieties so that more people can eat Chinese blueberries.