The recent rainfall seen in many parts of China has had some impact on the ongoing fruit harvest. Due to bad weather and a market downturn, winter jujubes from Shaanxi Province, one of the main production areas of this fruit, are facing obstacles in sales. Some businesses were forced to change their sales strategies to deal with the crisis. Yang, manager of Dali County Kaiyifan E-Commerce Co., Ltd. talked about recent harvest and sales of winter jujubes.
The rainy weather in Shaanxi earlier this season had some impact on planting, pushing back the growth period and harvest season by almost a month. "In previous years, mid-August would be the end of the harvest season, but this season, the harvest has just begun. At present, we are still experiencing rainy weather in the production areas and the harvest is slow. In addition, due to Covid-19, there are not many traders coming to the production centers. Our current harvest volume is only less than 5,000 kilos. A large part of the harvest is facing the risk of slow sales,” Yang said. “The harvest season is expected to end in October, but we expect about 30% of the fruit to rot in the fields.”
Facing these issues, Yang’s strategy is to abandon poor-quality fruit and only harvest high-quality fruit to take a premium route. “In the past, we would grade all the harvested fruit and customize packaging for premium grades. Due to the impact of Covid-19 this season, market consumption levels have decreased, and people generally do not want to spend more on the packaging. For this reason, we have simplified packaging and only kept foam boxes,” Yang said.
“In addition to making changes to the package, we have also made some adjustments in our sales channels. In previous years, a large part of our fruit was marketed on online platforms such as JD.com. However, there are a large number of merchants on these platforms, and fruit products there are of mixed quality. In order to distinguish us from some unscrupulous merchants who market low-quality fruit products, we have changed our sales channels this season, focusing on community channels where we can directly connect with customers. In terms of pricing, the current price of premium winter jujubes is around 8 yuan per half a kilo, nearly 3 yuan lower than in previous years."
Dali County Kaiyifan E-Commerce Co., Ltd. has a winter jujube production center of about 200,000 mu in Weinan City, Shaanxi Province, with a yearly production of about 500,000 kilos. “The varieties grown in each main producing area is different, depending on geographical and climatic conditions. The main varieties we grow are Winter Jujube No. 1 and Lizao. The forger has a honey-like taste and the latter is very refreshing. Due to the obstacles and challenges that we are facing, we still have hundreds of thousands of kilos of premium products not being harvested. We hope customers with purchasing demand to contact us."
More Information:
Contact: Yang Yuanyuan
Company: Dali County Kaiyifan E-Commerce Co., Ltd.
Email: www.454578145@qq.com
Tel.: +86 18891310740