The beginnings of a lucrative raspberry empire
Print Edition
AFTER years in Canada, nobody expected businessman Huang Yuanchao to return to Tianmen City in central China’s Hubei Province to start a raspberry empire.
Born into a rural family in Tianmen, Huang worked as an automation engineer upon graduation at a Beijing research institute starting in 1986. Bored with the routine job, he started his own trading company in 1993 selling merchandise, including imported cars, and made a fortune over the course of a decade.
Huang moved to Toronto, Canada in 2002 with his wife to enjoy an easier pace of life and support her career as an acupuncture therapist. He grew raspberry plants for fun in their house’s backyard, along with blueberries and other plants, but never imagined he would become a raspberry farm owner in China. Inspired by a friend who is a raspberry farm owner in Beijing’s suburbs, He set up Hubei Gold Berry S&T Development Co Ltd and started his berry farm in 2007.
Unlike his friend, who exports raspberries to Spain, the Republic of Korea and other countries, Huang has taken advantage of the growing Chinese middle class’s appetite for the fruit. Per capita disposable income in China climbed 10.9 percent from a year earlier to 18,311 yuan (US$2,950) in 2013, outstripping the nation’s economic growth rate of 7.7 percent in the same year.
“Raspberries are good for health ... I moved my backyard raspberry garden in Toronto to China and expanded it into a 2,000 mu (130 hectares) farm. Starting an undertaking is not easy, but I find myself doing something useful for the community,” the 49-year-old entrepreneur said in an interview.
A spate of food safety scandals in China has added to people’s enthusiasm for organic vegetables and fruits. Organic raspberries from Huang’s farm have found their way into three upscale supermarkets in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei, where they sell for about 350 yuan per pound. Huang intends to sell them across China, with branches of his company already set up in metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai.
Raspberry village head
Investment in agriculture requires patience, and it took about two years for Huang’s team to select seven US and European raspberry varieties suitable to grow in Tianmen from a list of 50. He has experienced ups and downs, with a flood hitting 200 mu of his raspberry farm in 2009, costing him millions of yuan.
With the goal of running China’s largest raspberry farm and processor and a tolerance for risk, Huang has plowed all his cash into the project and borrowed tens of millions from friends and banks, using his apartments in China as collateral.
He is making tremendous efforts to secure a round of investment from venture capital organizations to support R&D and production of a range of related products, such as raspberry juice and raspberry leaf tea. Many Chinese fruit orchard owners have not tapped into the high added-value food processing industry, and Gold Berry is the first Chinese company to produce raspberry leaf tea, said Dai Hanping, a professor at Shenyang Agricultural University.
Huang has spent more than 4 million yuan on his raspberry leaf tea production line, which can produce both green and black tea. He is pressing ahead with plans to produce an array of other raspberry-related products to generate stronger sales and higher profits.
Imported cherries are more popular among Chinese, and Huang is working to spread “raspberry fever” throughout China. “If I can increase my raspberry farm tenfold, I can create a ‘raspberry village’ and become its head ... I can help thousands of farmers become professional workers at farms near their homes,” he said.
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