"China: "Rising labor costs drop seed export volumes"

"We offer crossbred tomato seeds to our domestic and international customers. Currently, the international customers take up 50% of all of our customers. Compared to 4 years ago, this is 20% less. The main reason for this is that the domestic labor costs have been rising over the years, which increases the product price and makes exports harder. We are now trying to reduce our labor costs by different methods, such as land circulation and centralized production, so we can offer our customers a breeding service of high quality at a competitive price," introduces Mr. Yao from Zhangye Yatai Seeds.

Greenhouse production breeding site of Yatai Seeds

Chili peppers

"Our company owns 80 hectares (800 mu) of seed production and testing sites in Zhangye, Jiuquan and Jinta in Gansu province, Xi'an in Shaanxi province, Yingkou in Liaoning province, and Honghezhou and Yuanjiang in Yunnan province. At the testing sites in Yunnan, we mainly do purity evaluations of different breeds and plant disease monitoring. This strict control system helps us to guarantee product quality."

Tomato crossbreed technology

Fresh peppers

"With over ten years of effort, we now have a stable customer base on the domestic and international market. When we select locations for our production sites, we, for example choose regions where temperature differences are rather high, to ensure that our seeds mature slowly, with high quantity of dry materials, plump seeds, and high sprouting rates. Secondly, we use sterile production technologies, such as steel greenhouses and insect repelling nets to protect the production. This guarantees the quality of our seeds."

Tomatoes

Employees are monitoring the crops

"At the moment, apart from selling our products to domestic agricultural institutions and large scale seed companies, we are also exporting through the port of Tianjin and the Beijing airport to countries such as America, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands. In the future, we hope to be able to expand the European and Japanese market even more."

Paris Si
Zhangye Yatai Seeds
www.ytseeds.cn
Phone: +86 182 9366 6009
Email: ytseeds@126.com