Once upon a time, China's original ham sausage was the three kingdoms: Chundu, Zheng Rong and Shuanghui. Later, Chundu and Zheng Rong disappeared, and Shuanghui and two other companies formed the "New Three Kingdoms" of the meat products industry, one of which was Jin Gong and the other was Yurun.
The three companies have been competing for hegemony for nearly a decade, especially between Shuanghui and Yurun, rushing to be "China's first butcher".
Zhu Yicai, the founder of Yurun at that time, was also a legendary figure of a generation. Starting with 200 yuan, he created a business empire of 150 billion yuan and became the richest man in Jiangsu. Today, the legend has ended, 70 billion debts are pressed down, and what peaks and what glory are all blown away by rain and wind.
1. Go to the sea to start a business
At the end of the 1980s, Zhu Yicai, who ate imperial grain at the Anhui Provincial Transportation Department, resolutely went to the sea, took only 200 yuan to make water intentions, and earned the first bucket of gold in his life.
In 1992, he found that the low-temperature meat food market was a blank, so he borrowed part of the idle factory building of Nanjing Food Canning Factory and founded Nanjing Yurun Food Company (the predecessor of Yurun Food) and began to produce Yurun ham.
Good luck
In the following years, Yurun Food started from low-temperature meat, started from the southern market, and in the fiercely competitive meat industry, which was already a blue ocean, it tore open a hole and sat up little by little.
In the process of market development, it also carries out differentiated competition to the end, avoiding the supermarkets and shopping malls where everyone competes most fiercely, but starting from hotels and non-food stores, surrounding large stores with small shops, and slowly encroaching on the market. In the process, several interesting stories also take place.
For example, in 1995, a small boss in Changzhou came to the door and wanted to give 300 pounds of ham on credit for his newly opened hotel. 300 pounds said less is not much, Zhu Yicai weighed in his heart, felt that this is a good opportunity to do word of mouth, and agreed to it. Did not think, this hotel just opened two months, each month of the flow of water reached more than 800,000, the small boss to be happy to close their mouths, everyone will boast, said that the hotel operation is so smooth, are entrusted to the blessing of Yurun. Rain and rain, bringing the moisture of rain to our hotel.
This southern boss, doing business to talk about feng shui, other peers listen, buy rain run has good luck? One by one, they lined up and came over. Half a year later, 90% of the hotels in Changzhou took their goods from Yurun.
For example, once, a non-staple food store in Wuxi accidentally paid 50,000 yuan more when it paid Yurun. After knowing this news, Zhu Yicai personally took the overpaid cash and went to the door to refund the money overnight. The matter spread, gave Yurun a free advertisement, more than 500 food stores in Wuxi City, a one-time advance payment of more than 1 million yuan. Not because of anything else, just to run this conscience against the rain.
In this way, relying on high-quality products and reliable reputation, Yurun has gained a firm foothold in Jiangsu and Anhui.
2. The snake swallows the elephant and catches the express train of the restructuring of state-owned enterprises
In 1996, Zhu Yicai did a big thing. That year, the restructuring of state-owned enterprises was in full swing, and many state-owned enterprises with poor efficiency were sold to private capital.
Zhu Yicai seized the opportunity, did not pay a penny, 0 yuan merger and acquisition of a state-owned enterprise with a total asset of 70 million yuan, Nanjing canning factory, became the first case of "private enterprises to acquire state-owned enterprises" in Jiangsu Province. And at that time, Yurun, you guess the total assets? Only 5 million. This is a real "snake swallowing elephant"!
After buying the Nanjing Canning Factory for 0 yuan, Yurun obtained valuable land, factories and skilled workers, and after investing 120 million yuan in transformation, it achieved sales of 100 million yuan and a net profit of more than 5 million yuan. After tasting the sweetness, Zhu Yicai took advantage of the hot iron and used similar tricks to successively acquire 25 state-owned enterprises that had collapsed or were on the verge of closure, such as Anhui Fuyang Meat Factory and Sichuan Neijiang Meat Factory, which can be called the "state-owned enterprise harvester" in the meat industry.
In the process of annexing state-owned assets again and again, the scale of Yurun has expanded rapidly, doubling exponentially. The product category expanded to more than 1,000 kinds, and there were more than 1,000 dealers in the country.
By 2001, Yurun Group's annual sales reached 3.4 billion yuan, and Zhu Yicai also climbed the "Forbes" rich list and became the richest man in Jiangsu Province.
In 2005, Yurun was listed in Hong Kong, and in June 2009, he won a controlling stake in the A-share listed company Nanjing Zhongshang, which was later renamed to today's Central Shopping Mall.
3. Start diversification and expansion
When the main meat eating business was doing well, Zhu Yicai floated away, feeling that he was invincible in the world, and he was more ruthless than anyone else when he crossed the boundary.
In 2008, Yurun moved towards the upstream of the industrial chain, and the pig breeding industry launched a fierce attack. In two years, the breeding base of Yurun pig breeding has blossomed nationwide. Zhu Yicai also put forward the so-called "333" development strategy: the construction of global procurement centers for agricultural and sideline products in 30 provincial capitals across the country, the construction of logistics and distribution centers for agricultural and sideline products in 300 prefecture-level cities, and the construction of agricultural and sideline products breeding and breeding production bases in 3,000 counties.
However, again and again, the big strokes eventually became waste again and again.
Some news revealed that in 2009, Yurun invested 150 million yuan in Xiao County, Anhui Province, to build a breeding base, and planned to achieve an annual output value of nearly 500 million yuan. The result? Cheap land was in hand, generous government subsidies were given, and factories were built, but the grass of the pig farm grew taller than the people, and the nearby villagers were stunned that they did not even hear the sound of pigs.
Not only In Xiao County, but in other parts of Anhui, and even in Liaoning, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Yurun's projects have seen a similar situation. Everyone said: Are you Yurun using the name of raising pigs to circle money and land, and take huge government subsidies?
Yurun did not respond to these doubts, it is now encircled with a large amount of land, is busy doing real estate development. From residential to commercial complexes, from logistics centers to tourism industries, Yurun Real Estate has set up horses and horses to encircle land, with projects covering more than 60 cities such as Shanghai, Qingdao, Huangshan and other large and small cities, and the investment amount is more than 100 billion.
There is no real estate foundation accumulation, no scientific real estate management, no accurate development status, Yurun real estate has, that is, Yurun food from the main business to earn real money and silver, spending that is called a pain. By the end of 2013, the developable building reserve area of Yurun Real Estate exceeded 60 million square meters.
In addition, Yurun also established Lian Life, involved in the field of finance and insurance, and also cooperated with brands such as DreamWorks, Disney and Sony to get involved in the cultural circle.
Under the crazy diversification and expansion, Yurun's territory has expanded dramatically, becoming a comprehensive group spanning logistics, real estate, culture, food, tourism, commerce, insurance, finance, construction and other fields, with a total sales volume of more than 100 billion. This business is extremely wide, the front line is extremely long, and correspondingly, the demand for funds is also extremely large.
4. The main business is declining, and the Yurun Empire is empty inside
Since playing with diversification, Zhu Yicai's mind is no longer in the meat industry. Once he wrote a motto for Yurun Food: The food industry is a moral industry. But now? In his view, there is only one role for Yurun Food, that is, the big nurse of Yurun Group. Whichever child is hungry, go feed the child. What morality, what quality, were thrown out of the clouds by him.
In January 2011, Yurun's subsidiary company outflowed a batch of "problem pork" containing hormones and pathogenic microorganisms. In August, some of Yurun's roast duck, roast chicken and brine duck products showed more colonies than the standard.
In September, six months after rival Shuanghui was exposed to the "clenbuterol" incident, a batch of lunch meat and bacon in Yurun were also detected to contain clenbuterol. There are also many consumers who report that there are various foreign bodies in Yurun's products, including bugs, hair, packaging plastics, metal buckles and so on.
A series of food quality and safety issues have greatly damaged Yurun's brand image. But at this time, Zhu Yicai had no intention of taking care of Yurun food at all, and most of his energy was focused on Yurun Real Estate.
Often at ten o'clock in the evening, but also with the senior management of Yurun Real Estate meeting, one project after another to understand the progress, one open is four or five hours, until two or three o'clock in the morning. Even in July 2012, Zhu Yicai withdrew from the board of directors of Yurun Food and threw himself into the real estate business.
Soon, the outbreak of the "ham sausage poisoning" incident became a fuse that triggered the crisis of the Yurun Group.
In September 2012, a number of students in a primary school in Hejiang County, Sichuan Province, suddenly felt abdominal pain and dizziness after eating ham sausages produced by Yurun. The dolls were rushed to the hospital for prescriptions and infusions, and more than 20 of them were hospitalized for observation. As soon as the incident came out, the reputation of Yurun Food collapsed at once.
However, how did Yurun respond to this? Compensation is compensation, apology is also apologized, but when it comes to problems, it is either "negligence" in the production process, "negligence" in the packaging link, or transportation problems. It was also stated that these were individual cases and were individual cases.
Food safety is no small matter. After the problem occurs, in addition to the responsibility for compensation, the enterprise must find out the root cause of the problem and effectively correct it, rather than using "negligence" and "individual" to prevaricate the past. This incident exposed the long-term nature of Yurun's loose internal management.
▲2011-2014 Yurun Food Revenue Changes Unit: HK$100 million
Since then, Yurun's performance has been declining. From 2011 to 2014, the turnover of Yurun Food declined year by year, from HK$32.3 billion to HK$26.7 billion, 21.4 billion and HK$19 billion. Profits are even worse. In 2009 and 2011, yurun food's net profit was more than HK$1.7 billion per year. However, in 2012, it suddenly lost 600 million Hong Kong dollars, and its net profit hovered around 50 million Hong Kong dollars.
The food business collapsed, the capital chain of Yurun Real Estate became increasingly tight, and many projects entered a state of suspension or semi-suspension, becoming a rotten building.
At this time, the Yurun Empire had a market value of hundreds of billions of yuan, but in fact, it was a failure of gold and jade, and it was already empty in the stomach. Finally, in 2015, the group's debt crisis broke out in a concentrated manner, and the last glory of Yurun ended.
5. The building will fall, and it will be difficult to find a way to save oneself
In March 2015, Zhu Yicai, 51, was formally arrested by the procuratorate on charges of bribery, breach of trust to harm the interests of listed companies, and intentional destruction of accounting documents. In fact, when Zhu Yicai acquired the Central Shopping Mall that year, he was suspected of conveying benefits and paying bribes, leaving a handle.
Since then, negative news from the Yurun department has come out one after another, executives have left, and creditors have come to the door. From 2015 to 2019, Yurun Food's losses continued to expand, with a loss of 2 billion to 5 billion Hong Kong dollars per year, which can be said to be a sharp drop, which can only greatly reduce production capacity, lay off employees, and survive by constantly selling assets and borrowing from banks.
The group's nurses themselves are difficult to protect, and the children who are waiting to be fed at the bottom of the group naturally have no way to live. Before 2015, although the sales of Yurun Real Estate were not large, they could also have more than 10 billion yuan per year, but after 2015, sales shrank by 60% or 70% at once, and bank mortgages could not be approved, so they could only sell their projects one by one. For example, Yurun's International Plaza in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, was sold at a low price of 700 million yuan; its subsidiary in Yangzhou was also bought for 2.45 billion yuan.
In the end, the merger and acquisition aborted, and Yurun Real Estate could only continue to break down.
By the time the procuratorate voluntarily withdrew the bribery charge due to insufficient evidence, Zhu Yi finally returned to the public eye, it was January 2019. After his return, the stock price of Yurun Food once soared by 50%, which shows how high the market's expectations for the boss are.
But even Zhu Yicai, in the face of the devastated Yurun Group, is powerless.
There is an idiom called things are people, 1400 days have passed, Zhu Yicai has returned, and as ambitious as then, do not give up lightly, but Yurun has long been not the original Yurun, the market is no longer the market of that year.
In January 2021, Beijing Putuo Investment submitted an application to introduce strong investors such as large central enterprises to reorganize Yurun Group. However, with the high debt ratio of Yurun and the complexity of creditor-creditor relations, the hope of Yurun's comeback is really ethereal.
Desire can make a person or destroy a person. From the early low-price acquisition of state-owned enterprises, to the later low-price land acquisition and fraudulent compensation, and then to the radical diversification expansion in the later stage, Zhu Yicai's good and great achievements made him lose his original intention of doing the food industry, and finally abandoned his previous achievements.
bibliography:
1. GPLP Rhino Finance, "How the Former Richest Man in Jiangsu Yurun Fell Off the Altar Step by Step"
2. Finance and Economics, "Jiangsu Private Enterprises in the Post-"Debt Crisis" Era, Yurun Group's "Gamble" Is Over"
3. The First Agricultural Economic Network, "Many primary school students in Hejiang, Sichuan Province, are unwell after eating Yurun ham"
4. Yurun Food listing prospectus and annual report
Edited | Liangshan
Typography | Liangshan
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