Brief (coffeeyo.com): Baoshan Zhongka Food Co. answers in five years how much a coffee bean can move: sales up from 49 million to 270 million yuan, top of domestic e-commerce fresh-ground coffee for five straight years, and a “national advanced grassroots Party branch” — proof that in the private sector, Party-building done for real is productivity.
Original title: News +1° | The “Red Code” in Baoshan’s Small-Grain Coffee Beans — a documentary on how Yunnan Baoshan Zhongka Food Co., Ltd. uses Party leadership to drive high-quality enterprise development.
How much industrial energy can one coffee bean leverage? What leading role can a private enterprise’s Party branch release? Is non-public enterprise Party-building merely “hanging a sign and going through motions,” or is it real productive force?
In Baoshan, Yunnan, Baoshan Zhongka Food Co., Ltd. has written its answer over five years: annual sales climbing from 49 million yuan to 270 million yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 40.68%, holding the top spot in domestic mainstream e-commerce platforms’ fresh-ground coffee category for five consecutive years, and growing into a national key leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization. On July 1 this year, the company’s Party branch was awarded “National Advanced Grassroots Party Organization.”
A dazzling corporate scorecard and a national-level Party-building honor landed on this private coffee enterprise at once. Behind it is the vivid practice of Zhongka’s Party branch building Party-building into every link of the industry chain, turning organizational strength into enterprise competitiveness, all-staff productivity, and the farmer-enriching power of linking agriculture with farmers — constructing a development closed loop of “industry raises questions, research solves them, market verifies them.”
Setting direction: from “face” to “substance,” with a sure hand in decision gatekeeping
A dispute over “where the money should go” once erupted heatedly at Zhongka’s strategic decision committee.
“Factory expansion does need consideration — many clients come, and the plant is also a façade,” said company chairman Yang Zhu, advocating first expanding the plant to build image. “What we should invest in most now is production equipment, especially screening, roasting, and testing equipment. If equipment can’t keep up, we can’t take premium orders; no matter how good the image, it’s useless,” countered Zhao Hongli, company Party member and production head, arguing her case forcefully.
The dispute ended with the Party branch’s suggestion adopted — funds originally intended for plant expansion were prioritized toward production-equipment investment. Moving money from “face” to “substance” seems just a budget adjustment, but behind it is Zhongka’s key step in breaking the “two separate skins of Party-building and operations.”
“Over these years, the Party branch has participated in formulating 15 major enterprise matters. Through mechanisms like ‘two-way entry and cross-post holding,’ branch committee members are deeply integrated into management; currently Party members make up 50% of enterprise management,” said Luo Yingfen, branch committee member and administrative director.
The Party branch not only sets the enterprise’s direction but also offers constructive opinions. “Now when making major decisions, the first thing we think of is asking the branch for its view,” Yang Zhu admitted. At Zhongka, the Party branch is not a passive attendee but truly advises and speaks up at the strategic level, helping steer the ship — turning Party-building into the core productive force of enterprise development.
Breaking through hard passes: from “not acclimatized” to “precise match,” Party members lead the tech breakthrough
Entering Zhongka, an AI intelligent sorting line is running at high speed — processing 3 tons of coffee beans per hour with a defective-bean rejection rate above 99%. Yet three years ago, no Baoshan enterprise could introduce such high-precision equipment; even if bought, it might not work.
“In the past we relied on manual selection — busy all day we still couldn’t pick out many premium beans, and those picked still had defects; we couldn’t guarantee flavor batch consistency, let alone take the big national orders, so we could only take the low-end, volume route,” Zhao Hongli recalled. Later they imported equipment, but it matched none of the size, mold, or borer characteristics of Baoshan small-grain coffee.
The equipment was “not acclimatized,” blocking not just one production line but Baoshan small-grain coffee’s step toward high-end. At this juncture, the Party branch stepped forward again.
“This equipment is a very large investment and high risk; no one had done the localization adaptation. But to make premium coffee, raw-material screening is especially important. If we can’t crack this pass, Baoshan small-grain coffee’s brand premium and industrial upgrade are out of the question. I am the branch secretary; I should lead this charge,” said Yang Guixiang, company Party branch secretary and manager of the engineering and automation department, with force.
Yang Guixiang led the assault as the “secretary takes the list and tackles the topic” project, bringing Party-member technical backbone into the workshop. Equipment selection, parameter debugging, algorithm retraining, localization adaptation — for nearly a year, the workshop was almost their home.
“The biggest difficulty was having no ready reference case; the secretary could only lead the team in continuous exploration, using massive data labeling and iterative models to tune precise recognition, finally matching over 100 adaptation models, taking about a year front and back,” Zhao Hongli said.
Today, the company’s AI visual sorting, dynamic roasting control, and “Fresh Shield” freshness-lock technology have successively landed; daily sorting capacity rose dozens of times, handling over 10,000 e-commerce parcels a day, and the beans’ optimal flavor window extended from 2 months to 18 months. To date, Zhongka has cumulatively obtained 32 patents related to coffee processing and breeding, including 4 invention patents. The full-process automation from roasting and sorting to bean output is exactly the path Party members pioneered by taking the lead — this is the combat power of an advanced grassroots Party organization that grasps innovation and strong support, breaking the deadlock through technological breakthrough.
Gathering talent: from lab to fields, the red classroom unites hearts
The technical barrier was broken by Party members taking the lead, but Baoshan small-grain coffee’s premiumization needs more than workshop equipment — the seed must be held in one’s own hands.
“Fruit grown at high altitude is fuller and better; the large day-night temperature difference makes it sweeter and more aromatic, and with three-dimensional planting of shade trees like nuts, the premium-fruit rate can exceed 70%,” introduced Wu Jun, deputy director of the Lujiangba research-base office of the Tropical and Subtropical Cash Crop Research Institute, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
“This variety isn’t hard to manage — few pests, good yield, and income higher than the old varieties. Last year we planted about 40 mu, income up about 60% from before,” said coffee farmer Zhang Heyun, grinning ear to ear.
What Zhang Heyun praised is “Yunka No. 1” — Yunnan’s first premium coffee variety with independent intellectual property rights, bred by the Yunnan Academy’s Tropical Cash Crop Institute and exclusively industrialized by Zhongka. To turn the lab’s fine seeds into farmers’ good harvests and the enterprise’s “golden beans,” Zhongka’s Party branch moved the red classroom into the fields, driving the research, production, and market ends to pull in the same direction: the industry end raises needs, the research end tackles and solves them, the market end feeds back and verifies.
“Through Zhongka’s joint-building and branch co-construction activities, we said farewell to the closed-door research model, letting research truly land and benefit farmers. Market feedback also lets us better breed fine varieties suited to enterprises and customers,” Wu Jun said.
The Party branch also took the lead in developing characteristic courses like “Viewing Rural Revitalization Through Coffee Beans” and “E-commerce Livestream Operations in Practice,” tackling technical discussion and ideological consensus together. To date, it has cultivated 17 professional talents such as international coffee tasters and senior roasters, 33 livestream hosts and operations specialists, and cumulatively over 100 coffee-industry skilled workers.
“Through the red classroom I learned about shade trees, pest resistance, and more, so I can better answer customers’ questions — why the flavor is good, why the price is high — and sell products better,” said Zhang Jiaxi, company Party member and operations assistant.
“Though I’m not a Party member, the company always holds us to Party-member standards; I can join the courses on Party members’ professional knowledge, technical skills, and professional conduct. When I first joined I didn’t understand coffee much; now I can clearly distinguish the flavors of different roast degrees and the quality differences of different varieties,” said company barista Li Fan.
“Our employees’ average age is 32. Through the branch leading learning, we’ve cultivated business backbone into Party members and Party members into management backbone, making the team’s cohesion and competitiveness stronger,” Yang Zhu said.
Opening the red classroom right in the coffee fields links the whole industry chain of research, production, and market, letting researchers speak face to face, farmers verify with experience, and employees learn immersively. This is not an ordinary study session but a cohesion scene that twists everyone into one rope — a vivid practice of the Party branch grasping ideology and strengthening leadership.
Revitalizing the industry: from “sold by the ton” to “savored by the cup,” the whole chain drives shared prosperity
To date, Zhongka’s annual roasting capacity reaches 10,000 tons, with over 2,600 mu of coffee demonstration planting bases, radiating and driving over 30,000 mu of high-altitude premium coffee planting, helping over 10,000 coffee-farming households cumulatively increase income by over 53 million yuan, and propelling coffee beans’ value leap from “sold by the ton” to “savored by the cup.”
“Baoshan Zhongka’s ‘National Advanced Grassroots Party Organization’ honor fully confirms that doing Party-building for real is productivity, doing it strong is competitiveness, doing it finely is cohesion,” said Yang Yaochun, director of the Party and Government Office of the Baoshan Industrial Park Management Committee, adding that next it will guide more park enterprises to learn from the advanced and promote development through branch joint-building, experience sharing, and resource exchange, further advancing the park’s non-public Party-building quality and efficiency and industrial transformation and upgrade, empowering the park’s high-quality economic development with high-quality Party-building.
Decision gatekeeping has a sure hand, Party members charge on breakthroughs, the red classroom unites hearts. Zhongka’s Party branch builds Party-building into every link of the industry chain, turning organizational strength into enterprise competitiveness and the farmer-enriching power of linking agriculture with farmers. This also confirms that non-public enterprise Party-building is not “hanging a sign and padding headcount,” but real productive force. Today, in the aroma of Baoshan small-grain coffee, a flavor called “Party-building red” is drifting. (Wang Kuidong, Peng Ruiying, Duan Xiaohui, Yang Rongtao)
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