Author: KANG BING and HUANG ZHILING , Business Weekly staff, China
Daily
CHENGDU: Hungry visitors to Sichuan may find themselves amazed at the current oversupply of fish on the market, pushing prices below even that for pork.
Twenty years ago, the price of fresh fish was five times as much as pork in this large, inland agricultural province.
Now, Sichuan exports more than one million kilograms of fish to other parts of the country each year.
According to provincial officials, Sichuan owes much of this tremendous change to 36-year-old Liu Hanyuan and his Tongwei Enterprise Group, China's largest aquatic feed producer.
However, Liu's involvement in the feed industry was accidental.
Born into a farmer's family, Liu dreamed of studying radio. But the radio amateur was enrolled in an aquiculture school in 1978 when he graduated from junior high school. Upon graduation, he became a aquiculture technician in his hometown of Meishan in 1981.
Liu began experimenting on methods to raise fish output in the local canal.
In 1983, he invented a 64-square-metre metal net cage and placed it in the canal with 185 kilograms of fry. The cage yielded a record 1,390
kilogrammes of fish.
As Liu's invention could greatly boost fish output, the State Science and Technology Commission and Ministry of Agriculture spread it nationwide in 1986 and 1987.
With more farmers using the cage fishing technique, one problem arose: no specialized fish feed was available on the market. After an intensive study of nutriology and nosology, Liu developed a type of fodder that was appropriate to fish raised in cages.
Liu established Southwest China's first fish feed plant in Meishan in 1986. The feed became very popular among fish farmers. Output reached 5,000 tons in 1986.
In 1992, Liu raised more than 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) to establish the Tongwei company in Meishan. Headquartered in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, the firm was the first feed producer in China to be granted the ISO9002 (International Standardization Organization) certificate to show the quality and standards of its products, working conditions and management level.
Tongwei has nearly 30 domestic and foreign subsidiaries and more than 100 branches. With an annual feed output of nearly
three million tons, it is the largest aquatic feed producer in the country and one of its leading livestock and poultry feed suppliers.
About 100,000 farming households in the province have become rich by raising fish. Their total income has increased by over 100 million yuan (US$12 million).
