The rise of a city is inseparable from the rise of entrepreneurs. The same is true of Qingdao.
Bai Changjun: In order to promote the realization of industrialization, it was decided to initiate the establishment of an innovative enterprise in the form of cash, proprietary technology and intellectual property shareholding cooperation.
Throughout the ten years of new development, Qingdao enterprises, especially Qingdao private enterprises, have a significant feature: they are usually not known to the public, but they are sharp in innovation and research and development capabilities, and are in a position of "choking throat" in a certain industrial chain.
Bai Changjun: Haizhiyuan's R&D and innovation, we are divided into three levels, one is forward-looking, strategic product innovation, the second is sustainable innovation, and the third is client innovation.
Today, let us approach Bai Changjun, a leading talent in Taishan industry in Shandong Province, and Qingdao Haizhiyuan Life Technology Co., Ltd., which he founded, and listen to their stories of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Bai Changjun: At present, Haizhiyuan, we have Qingdao Functional Lipid Processing and Application Engineering Technology Research Center, Qingdao Marine Food and Pharmaceutical Heart Raw Materials Engineering Research Center, these scientific research platforms, marine microbial oil green refining and deep processing technology is also at the domestic leading level, and the key technology of breast milk fat industrialization is at the international leading level.
The starting point of Bai Changjun is a new industry norm promulgated by the state in 2010. After years of deep cultivation in the oil and fat industry, he is keenly aware that a new era related to "future food" is beckoning.
Bai Changjun: At that time, the state officially approved microalgae DHA oil as a new resource food, which can be used as a nutritional enhancer and applied in some dietary supplements of infant milk powder. We see this as a turning point and a starting point that has driven the industry of marine microbial lipids. We also recognize that microbial oils and fats such as microalgae will become an important supplement to edible oils in the future. When we talk about future food, this should be the direction.
At that time, this DHA product was still dependent on imports, and tuna fish oil was the earliest source. In order to promote the realization of industrialization, we decided to initiate the establishment of an innovative enterprise in the form of cash, proprietary technology and intellectual property equity cooperation - in 2014, Qingdao Haizhiyuan Life Technology Co., Ltd. came into being.
In the preparation of microbial grease, our more outstanding contribution is that Haizhiyuan first introduced the concept and process method of precision and moderation processing, which promoted the upgrading of the industry. We have also developed emulsification complete sets of technologies for DHA powder products, developed low-temperature spray drying and secondary spray embedding technologies, and diversified product formulations and applications.
In 2014, Bai Changjun was 47 years old. At that time, he was the chief engineer of Bohai Industry, and in the past 13 years, he has presided over the construction of 7 large oil and grease factories and 1 large plant fiber manufacturing plant. When the achievement is successful, why should we "replay the gong and drum and open another opening"? Bai Changjun said that the root of entrepreneurship lies in innovation, and it is the innovation gene that is integrated in the blood that prompts him to continue to move forward.
Bai Changjun: Because we are engaged in scientific research and technology work, it is a process of continuous innovation. We are engaged in the edible oil and fat industry, this industry its top products are functional fats, we will definitely attack this goal. At that time, we had built a lot of factories in China, and the scale of Bohai Industry had also been established, and after we had a certain scale, we hoped to develop in the direction of more cutting-edge products.
It's hard at first. At the beginning of the establishment of Hai Zhiyuan, the difficulty of Bai Changjun was based on the word "money".
Bai Changjun: Our factory was established in October 2015, and was only completed and put into operation in 2017, this process is because it is an industrialized development project, the cycle is relatively long, and the capital consumption is still relatively large. Financing was one of our biggest problems at the time, and I basically spent sixty or seventy percent of my energy on financing.
For a time, we couldn't pay our wages. We basically borrowed our own family's brothers, sisters, relatives and friends. Our employees, key employees, when our funds are at their most tight, take money from home and put it in the company. It is because there is a common mission, a common goal, that everyone walks together.
Although he traveled around to raise funds in the early days of entrepreneurship, Bai Changjun was very aware of one thing: as a high-tech enterprise characterized by scientific research and innovation, no matter how difficult it was, it could not be less than the money for research and development. In his words, "wages can be stopped, research and development cannot be stopped"
Bai Changjun: Haizhiyuan's R&D and innovation, we are divided into three levels, one is forward-looking, strategic product innovation, the second is sustainable innovation, and the third is client innovation. Since its inception, we have invested more than 60 million in scientific research. We rely on scientific research and innovation to build a market, not rely on commercial means to build a market, which is different from other enterprises. Only when we are leading in science and technology can we let downstream customers trust, we can cooperate and sell products.
We have undertaken more than 10 national, Shandong and Qingdao science and technology plans and scientific and technological projects, applied for more than 30 patents, and participated in and presided over more than 10 national industry standards. We believe that high investment in scientific research will yield high returns, but this is not a short-term behavior, but a long-term result. It is precisely because of the continuous strengthening of scientific research investment that our products and services can gain a good reputation in the industry, and we can be at the international leading level in the field of segmentation, which is a basic condition for the development of our enterprises.
The overall situation is plotted, and the key points are lost. With long-term accumulation and excellent scientific research and innovation capabilities, Bai Changjun led Hai Zhiyuan to successfully break the technical barriers of foreign patents in a short period of time, and starting from the first product - algal oil DHA, it abandoned the conventional playing method of "first imitating and then surpassing", and opened up a new way of survival.
Bai Changjun: Because you are a latecomer, our competitors are some multinational large companies, we have to get a certain market share in it, you have to prove yourself to customers, the process is still relatively difficult.
Then if we are involved in customer product innovation, from this stage to cut into this market, relatively speaking, we are better at it, because after all, we are an enterprise characterized by scientific research and innovation, and we have a strong ability in this regard.
In this way, we have to cooperate with downstream customers in depth, we will help them to do product solutions, help them to explore the selling points of products, help them to provide technical solutions, establish differentiation, and let them occupy the market. This is a strategy for us to break through the market. A lot of our competitors, he this product is stereotyped, they may not change for many years, because customization it needs scientific support, in this area we have more expertise. Of course, customers can also give a premium, and the price of the product will be appropriately higher. This kind of cooperation is often a long-term cooperation, a closer and deeper cooperation.
From the initial DHA algal oil, to the current "fist products" - breast milk fats and other products prepared by biological enzymes, "customization" allows Haizhiyuan to quickly occupy domestic and foreign market segments - only from 2018 to 2020, the company's sales have increased by nearly 10 times, becoming a veritable "light of domestic products". Especially for the breast milk fat project, from the establishment of the project to the commissioning of production, Haizhiyuan only took less than two years, and greatly improved the overall level of the industrial chain.
Bai Changjun: We proposed this concept of breast milk fat relatively early. In the past, when we first started developing this product, the lowest degree of similarity was probably tens of percent, and most companies were 50% or 70%. At present, breast milk fat and its key components have been industrialized in Haizhiyuan, and the similarity between our (products) and breast milk has reached more than 90%, which is still very leading in the world and in the world. Many companies are constantly pushing us to change this recipe.
Today, Haizhiyuan has successfully signed a long-term cooperation agreement with a large domestic breast milk company, and the annual sales of a single product will exceed 1 billion yuan in the future. Such a "divine speed" of innovation and landing ability, Bai Changjun attributed it to the in-depth cooperation of "industry,300," research.
Bai Changjun: Industry-university-research cooperation does not mean that we get a scientific research result from the school, we buy a patent from a scientific research institute, it is not so simple. In fact, we have never bought an existing scientific research result from a scientific research institute, we have all set goals to jointly develop scientific research results. Because the results of scientific research institutes are not necessarily suitable for our company, only if we find consumer trends in the market and understand the demands of customers, we have set goals to develop together, so that scientific research results can be used by enterprises.
We introduce academicians, well-known professors and experts, a very important purpose is that we want to understand some of the directions of scientific research and innovation, these backbone forces of scientific research institutes, they better understand the trend of technological progress, enterprises better understand the market demand, this should be effectively combined.
Activating the "vitality of geese" with the "head goose effect" is another major function brought to Haizhiyuan by the in-depth cooperation between industry, academia and research. On this basis, HaiZhiyuan's own talent factory has gradually become a scale with the accumulation of time.
Bai Changjun: We believe that the talent training mechanism is very important for enterprises to be good at establishing talent training and management capabilities, so that they have a growth channel. For example, timely introduction, timely discovery, timely opportunities, timely authorization and empowerment, timely incentives, help and leadership, and catching up with learning, these are all necessary talent training and management mechanisms, and we must make good use of these mechanisms.
We take the factory as the school and the market as the battlefield, and constantly train skilled craftsmen, cultivate professional and technical personnel, train organizational management talents, and temper market operation talents. We have introduced backbone scientific researchers, including academicians, well-known professors, engineering and technical experts, in fact, they preside over these scientific research projects, and he also has to train team members, which is very important, because he can only produce results if he trains the team well. The scientific research process does not depend on one person, but on a project team. The development of each scientific research project, we will cultivate a team; the industrialization transformation of each scientific research result represents that our company has a strong scientific research team, which is also a basic strategy for us to establish a talent factory.
It is often said that entrepreneurship is a practice, a winding road, a trekking road, a brilliant road, a lonely road, all in the imprint of the step by step under the feet. From 2014 to the present, 7 years of entrepreneurship, Bai Changjun has been moving forward. The belief in his heart is exactly the mission of Hai Zhiyuan - "making people healthier", both now and in the future.
Bai Changjun: I hope that Haizhiyuan will always take scientific research and innovation as its true color, always combine the commercial motivation of chasing profits with the eternal ideal of human society, and always take making people healthier and making the world a better place as its mission. Only in this way can we build the most trustworthy brands. I hope that Haizhiyuan will become a guide of health needs, a disseminator of health knowledge, make food safer and healthier, provide more new materials for food and medicine, and spread health knowledge to guide consumers, we believe these are very valuable, which are some ways for the industry to serve the country. We will experience success and happiness in the process of continuous struggle.
Text/Yijia Liu
Photo/Lu Yifei