On August 31st, in Zouping, Binzhou, Shandong, following the rich aroma of coffee, the reporter walked into Shandong Youran Coffee Co., Ltd.
In the vast production workshop, steel towers over ten meters high reach directly to the roof, with criss crossing pipelines connected to densely packed valves. Light green coffee beans undergo a series of processes such as roasting, extraction, separation, concentration, and drying to become fine instant coffee powder.
This is currently the world's largest single unit instant coffee production project, with an annual output of up to 12000 tons of instant coffee powder. Converted into cups of coffee, there are approximately 5 billion cups, enough for every person in the United States to drink one cup per day for nearly half a month.
In a county-level city in Shandong, the world's largest single unit instant coffee production project is hidden, which is already surprising enough.
What is even more unexpected is that the huge production system of Shandong Youran Coffee Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Youran") is not from abroad, but provided by Zouping Shuangfei Complete Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shuangfei") not far from here.
Even more coincidentally, the founders of both companies are local residents of Zouping – Zheng Gaofei.
Zheng Gaofei was born in 1979 and graduated from Dalian University of Technology, initially engaged in the research and development of drying equipment. Nowadays, his instant coffee equipment has been sold to multiple countries and regions such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and Russia, with a cumulative export value of about 400 million US dollars, supporting about 10% of the world's total instant coffee production capacity.
How can an engineer from a county town sell coffee equipment to various parts of the world?
The story begins in 2005.
That year, a large Indonesian food company approached Zheng Gaofei, hoping that he could trial produce drying equipment for an instant coffee production line. At the beginning, the customer didn't have much hope. "In Zheng Gaofei's memory, the requirements given by the other party were even somewhat" lenient ":" Make a semi-finished product first, and then slowly make changes later
This is not surprising.
Drying is a crucial step in turning concentrated coffee into instant coffee powder. It looks like it just evaporates water, but it's not that simple: as the temperature rises, the aroma of coffee is easily lost; If the atomization effect is not good, the powder particles will be difficult to meet the requirements; Slight changes in parameters such as pressure, feed rate, and inflation rate may affect the color, solubility, and flavor of the final product.
At that time, there were not many mature experiences available for reference, "Zheng Gaofei recalled. After repeated experimentation and debugging, he delivered the equipment on time, and all indicators of the coffee powder met the customer's requirements, with results far exceeding their initial expectations.
This experience made Zheng Gaofei realize that the coffee equipment that had long been dominated by foreign companies in the past was not something that Chinese people could not do. So, he teamed up with Professor Yu Caiyuan from Dalian University of Technology to systematically study the production process of instant coffee.
From baking to extraction, from separation to concentration, and finally to drying, we study each equipment step by step and solve each problem step by step. "Zheng Gaofei introduced that in 2009, the team finally broke through the main links of instant coffee production, moving from manufacturing a single drying equipment to providing a complete production line.
But the truly difficult things also start from then on.
Coffee beans from different regions have different moisture content, density, particle size, and flavor characteristics. Each customer has different requirements for the color, aroma, solubility, and yield of coffee. Almost every time they take on a new project, they will encounter problems that they have not encountered before. "Zheng Gaofei admitted that he could only" work while making changes, "but as he worked on more and more projects, his scattered experience gradually became a complete technical system.
Zheng Gaofei gave this method a very vivid name: 'Hand Rubbing'.
The so-called 'hand rubbing' is not about a few people closing the door and really rubbing a production line with their hands. It's more like an engineer's clumsy approach: without a ready-made answer, starting from what product the customer wants to produce, researching raw materials one by one, adjusting parameters repeatedly, and modifying equipment one by one, solving the problems encountered in each project from the root.
Over the past 20 years, this' stupid method 'has been getting faster and faster.
Zheng Gaofei calculated that for the same instant coffee production line with an annual output of 5000 tons, the imported equipment price is about 300 million yuan, and the delivery cycle usually takes about two years; The price of similar production lines in Shuangfei is about 40 million to 50 million yuan, and the delivery cycle can be compressed to 10 months.
Lower costs and faster delivery speeds have quickly opened up domestic and international markets for Shuangfei. According to Zheng Gaofei's estimation, of the approximately 93000 tons of instant coffee production capacity in China, about 91000 tons are supported by Shuangfei equipment; In the past five years, about half of the newly added instant coffee projects worldwide have adopted the Double Fly production line.
But as the market continued to expand, Zheng Gaofei gradually realized that just being able to make equipment was not enough.
In addition to traditional instant coffee, new products such as freeze-dried coffee and coffee liquid are constantly emerging. With every change in consumer demand, the backend production line needs to be upgraded accordingly, "he said." We not only need to know how to make a device, but also know what the next cup of coffee will look like. We need to truly approach consumers
In 2024, Zheng Gaofei made another decision: to extend from equipment manufacturing to coffee food processing and establish Shandong Youran Coffee Co., Ltd.
Shuangfei creates the equipment, and Yuran turns it into a product, "Zheng Gaofei explained the positioning of the two companies.
The two companies thus formed a closed loop of mutual verification and feedback: the equipment developed by Shuangfei can first undergo actual inspection on the production line of Youran; The data accumulated and problems encountered by Youran in production can in turn drive Shuangfei to improve equipment and processes. When customers came to inspect, Youran's factory also became the most intuitive "model room" for Shuangfei.
In conversations with reporters, Zheng Gaofei rarely talks about "subversion".
In recent years, the most he has done is running clients, reviewing projects, researching products and processes. A new coffee has appeared in the market, and he wants to figure out why it is popular; The customer has raised a new requirement and wants to continue researching how this product can be stably manufactured.
This is also the path for this Shandong enterprise to enter the global market. There are no sudden trends or winning techniques. Starting from a drying equipment, Zheng Gaofei and his team spent 20 years delving into specific problems, and finally turning these problem-solving abilities into advanced production lines for instant coffee sold around the world.
Coffee often reminds people of delicacy and relaxation, but few people notice that behind a cup of fragrant coffee, there are cold steel plates, vertical and horizontal pipes, and constantly jumping process parameters on the dashboard. A person from Zouping started from these 'invisible' places and 'hand rubbed' Shandong manufacturing into the global coffee industry chain.
Source: Popular News
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