Aojia Food： Add more prefabricated dishes to turn Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle into a well-known regional product.
[Dahe Finance Cube reporter Wu Haishu]Editor’s note | In 2022, known as the first year of prefabricated dishes, authoritative organizations predict that prefabricated dishes will become a huge outlet that will affect the next 30 years.
With the favorable policies, the gradual improvement of technology and equipment, and the continuous growth of consumer demand, prefabricated vegetables have been pushed to the peak of "vegetables" and ushered in the "golden period" of development.
The food industry, which is closely related to the prefabricated vegetable industry chain, is a traditional advantageous industry in Henan. Henan issued the Action Plan for Cultivating Green Food Clusters, which proposed that by 2025, Henan should build a trillion-dollar modern food cluster with world influence and build a strong green food industry.
From the government to the enterprise, Henan Province takes pre-cooked vegetables as the starting point, and through cultivating first-class "chain-owner" enterprises and building competitive food industry clusters, it realizes the upgrading and development of Henan’s food industry, promotes the transformation of industrial basic advantages into modern industrial system advantages, realizes the advantage reconstruction of the food industry, and turns "stock" into "increment".
On the occasion of the upcoming two sessions in Henan Province, Dahe Finance Cube launched a series of reports on the special planning of the two sessions in Henan Province-"Deep Reading of Henan Prefabricated Vegetables", which was directed by the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Department of Henan Province and produced by Dahe Finance Cube. Discuss with the government and industrial chain enterprises how to strengthen policy guidance, improve industrial ecology, build an influential prefabricated vegetable production province in China, and cultivate a new growth pole for high-quality development of Henan food industry. Today, the sixth article "Aojia Food: Adding more prepared dishes to turn Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle into a well-known regional product" was launched.
Q-bomb’s delicate taste and nourishing characteristics make soft-shelled turtle a delicious dish on the table. Xinyang Huangchuan has a warm climate, abundant rainfall, diverse soil types and abundant light and heat resources, which is an ideal environment for the growth and habitat of soft-shelled turtles. The data shows that at present, the turtle culture area in Huangchuan County is 200,000 mu, which is known as the "turtle kingdom". Huangchuan turtle is also a special product of Xinyang Huangchuan and a geographical indication product of China.
Henan Aojia Food Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Aojia Food), located in Huangchuan County, relies on the advantages of raw materials and varieties of local soft-shelled turtles in Huangchuan to vigorously develop the soft-shelled turtle prefabricated dish business. In the second half of last year, the sales of soft-shelled turtle prefabricated dishes reached nearly 5 million yuan, which was well received by many customers.
At the beginning of the new year, Liu Jie, chairman of Aojia Food, said in an interview with Dahe Finance Cube that the new workshop is currently under construction and is expected to be put into use in June. "In 2023, we will add more prefabricated dishes, hoping to make Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle as famous as Beijing roast duck and Daokou roast chicken."
Pre-cooked soft-shelled turtle dishes were introduced, with sales of nearly 5 million yuan in half a year.
Aojia Food is located in Renhe Industrial Zone, Huangchuan County, Xinyang City, Henan Province. It is a comprehensive food enterprise integrating planting, breeding, production and processing, sales and OEM processing. The existing product lines include hot processing, cold processing, aquatic products, braised pork products and drinking water production lines.
The existing sales markets of enterprise products are mainly distributed in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Xi ‘an. Aojia Food holds five sales companies in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin and Zhengzhou, and has a mature sales team and a warehousing and distribution team. Now it has five retail stores, more than 100 large and medium-sized supermarkets, more than 100 cooperative sales outlets and more than 30 outlets.
Liu Jie introduced that in 2022, Aojia Food continued the crayfish processing business, and at the same time, it reached a higher level in the field of soft-shelled turtle prepared dishes. "In the first half of 2022, we have been exploring. Since the second half of the year, the company has received many orders for processing, mainly enterprises in Shanghai and Beijing."
The prepared dishes of Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle introduced by Aojia Food divide and cook the soft-shelled turtle, and consumers only need to reheat the pot to eat it when they buy it home. In addition to competitive product quality and price, Liu Jie’s years of sales experience has accumulated a large number of customer resources in the cultural tourism industry, which has become a booster for the development of prepared food in Australia and Canada.
"The turtles in Huangchuan are yellow-covered turtles, also known as Chinese turtles. Only Huangchuan has yellow-covered turtles, and there are many farmers breeding turtles in Huangchuan. The Huangchuan county government has been encouraging farmers to raise turtles to increase their income." Liu Jie introduced that in addition to the advantages of varieties and raw materials, the skirt of Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle is full of elasticity, tender meat and high nutritional value, which has distinctive characteristics. In the second half of last year, the sales of various kinds of soft-shelled turtle prefabricated dishes reached nearly 5 million yuan.
Someone in the industry once told Liu Jie that the turtle industry chain in Huangchuan County, from breeding, incubation, seedling raising, live sales to deep processing, is expected to reach a scale of 1 billion yuan, with a huge market prospect and a very potential industry.
Huangchuan is known as the "turtle kingdom", with a breeding area of 200,000 mu.
Huangchuan County is located in the southeast of Henan Province, with Dabie Mountain in the south and Huaihe River in the north. It is located in the junction of Henan, Hubei and Anhui provinces. As a transitional area between the north and the south, Huangchuan has a warm climate, abundant rainfall, diverse soil types and abundant light and heat resources, making it an ideal environment for turtles to grow and inhabit.
Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle, also known as Chinese soft-shelled turtle, horseshoe soft-shelled turtle, old soft-shelled turtle and yuanyu, is an amphibian. Compared with foreign turtles, Huangchuan turtle has the characteristics of low back, wide skirt, tender meat and rich nutrition. It is a specialty of Huangchuan County, Henan Province and a geographical indication product of China.
According to the data, the superior natural environment has formed the obvious regional characteristics of Huangchuan soft-shelled turtle. Its outline is inverted horseshoe, its back is yellow-green, its skirt is wide and thick, its meat is tender and delicious, and its nutritional value and medicinal value are superior to other populations.
According to statistics, at present, the turtle breeding area in Huangchuan County is 200,000 mu, which is the largest pollution-free ecological turtle breeding base in Henan Province and is known as the "turtle kingdom".
In October, 2022, Henan Province issued the Action Plan for Accelerating the Development of Prefabricated Vegetable Industry in Henan Province (2022-2025) (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), proposing to focus on the development of finished or semi-finished prefabricated foods and related preparation and supporting industries with agricultural products, livestock and poultry products, aquatic products, etc. as the main raw materials through industrialized and standardized production. Promote the cross-border integration of pre-cooked dishes and cultural tourism, support the construction of pre-cooked food cultural cities (streets) with Central Plains characteristics, promote the deep integration of pre-cooked food industry with leisure, tourism and cultural industries, and drive the consumption of pre-cooked dishes.
Liu Jie believes that with the accelerated pace of people’s life, some young people can’t cook and have no time to cook. Prefabricated dishes are a very good supplement. With the release of a series of policies and industry standards, healthy and safe prefabricated dishes will have a great space in the future.
"In particular, processing and making threshold ingredients like soft-shelled turtles and crayfish is more suitable for developing into large prefabricated dishes." Liu Jie said that Xinyang has irreplaceable advantages in natural resources in aquatic products. Next, it will increase the research on Xinyang specialty food, and push Xinyang cuisine Huangchuan specialty to further places through industrialized and standardized production.
In 2023, it will invest in new workshops and increase the business of pre-cooked vegetables.
At present, the second-phase factory of Aojia Food is under construction, with an area of about 3,000 square meters, and there are three standardized workshops, one of which will be dedicated to the processing of prefabricated vegetables for aquatic products and can be put into use in June this year.
"In 2023, we will continue to cultivate deeply along the existing channels, and extend to local specialties on the basis of soft-shelled turtle prefabricated dishes, and develop new products, such as Huangchuan Huanggang fish soup, Hu spicy soup, Xinyang Gushi goose block, etc." Liu Jie said that in recent years, people’s acceptance of soft-shelled turtle has gradually increased, and new catering categories such as soft-shelled turtle hot pot have appeared. In addition to marinated soft-shelled turtle, soft-shelled turtle with golden soup and stewed soft-shelled turtle, semi-finished soft-shelled turtle will be introduced, and food will be supplied to catering enterprises.
The research and development of new flavors is also a major direction of Aojia Food this year. Liu Jie introduced that in addition to the company’s existing R&D team, we also cooperated with local famous chefs to improve the taste of local soft-shelled turtles, so as to make the products better go to the whole country.
Whether it is crayfish or soft-shelled turtle prepared dishes, the requirements for transportation environment are strict, and cold chain logistics is needed for distribution. "After our products are processed, we can put them in our own cold storage, and we can achieve our own distribution within a radius of 100 kilometers. However, we need to rely on cold chain logistics for further distance, and sometimes we will find vehicles through the network platform, but the cost will increase, and there will be security problems and greater pressure." Liu Jie said that how to save costs and improve efficiency in logistics this year is also a subject.
At present, seven of Aojia’s pre-cooked food business has become a wholesale channel, and the C-end accounts for 30%. Liu Jie said that in 2023, it will strengthen the team building of enterprises and increase the proportion of C-end sales. "If a food processing enterprise develops products in multiple categories, the cost of raw materials, processing techniques and procedures, as well as product packaging materials and labor will increase greatly. I prefer to aim at a large single product to polish the quality, optimize the service, reduce the cost and play my own brand."
Liu Jie said that Aojia Food will make every effort to build Huangchuan local brand "Huangchuan Braised Turtle", hoping that through its own efforts and the policy support and empowerment of local governments, it will make products with local characteristics like "Beijing Roast Duck", "Nanjing Salted Duck", "Daokou Roast Chicken" and "Shuangliu Rabbit Head" in Chengdu, and strive to make Huangchuan Braised Turtle a specialty with local characteristics and regional culture.
Editor: Liu Anqi | Audit: Li Zhen | Director: Wan Junwei
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