Our company is a modern enterprise that has been deeply rooted in the traditional Chinese medicine industry for nearly two decades, specializing in the full industrial chain operation of genuine medicinal materials. Starting from an initial 50-mu experimental field, it has now grown to have 6 core planting bases, 3 standardized processing workshops, and 1 provincial-level research and development center. Its business covers the entire chain of Chinese medicinal materials planting, primary processing, production of Chinese herbal decoction pieces, extract research and development, and medicinal materials trade. Its cooperative clients include over 300 domestic pharmaceutical enterprises, more than 100 chain pharmacies, and over 10 e-commerce platforms.
In the early stage of starting the business, the team traveled all over Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan and Guizhou. It took them three years to investigate over 200 towns and townships. Eventually, they selected five authentic production areas including Liangshan Prefecture (Chuan Xuduan), Aba Prefecture (Qianghuo) and Ya 'an (Chuan Qiong) to establish planting bases. In 2010, it became one of the first enterprises in the province to pass the national GAP(Good Manufacturing Practice for Chinese Medicinal Materials) certification. In the same year, it established cooperatives with 12 local village collectives, adopting the model of "enterprise + base + farmers", and uniformly providing seedlings, technical training and guaranteed purchase prices. Back then, in order to teach farmers to identify the best harvest time for medicinal herbs, technicians squatted in the fields, holding "Chinese Materia Medica" and comparing each item one by one. Now, the elderly farmers in the base can all tell the way to dig up the "Chuanqiong" 40 days after the Minor Fullness, when the stems and leaves turn yellow.
The processing center, which was built with an investment of 20 million yuan in 2015, passed the GMR certification. It introduced low-temperature drying equipment imported from Germany and slicing machines made in Japan, solving the problems of easy mold growth in traditional sun-drying and uneven thickness in manual slicing. Now in the processing workshop, the entire process from screening, cleaning to drying and sorting is visualized, and each link has an electronic ledger. For instance, when processing Angelica sinensis, the blackened and deteriorated individuals are first removed by a color sorter. Then, the sand and dirt are removed by an ultrasonic cleaner. After that, it is slowly dried at a constant temperature of 45℃ for 48 hours. Finally, it is classified into three grades according to the diameter of the roots: Special grade (>3&m), first grade (2-3cm), and second grade (1-2 cm). Each grade is accompanied by a quality inspection report. Customers can scan the code to view all the information from the planting plot to the processing team.
Research and development is another leg of ours. The team optimized the extraction process of ligustrazine by using supercritical extraction technology, and the yield increased from the original 0.8% to 1.2%. In response to market demands, standardized extracts such as Astragalus polysaccharides (with a content of over 50%) and Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (with a content of over 60%) have been developed. Currently, these products have been exported to five Southeast Asian countries. In 2020, a joint laboratory was established with the Provincial Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Sciences, dedicated to the research on the extraction of active ingredients from local medicinal materials produced in Sichuan. Last year, I also participated in formulating the "Quality Standard for Sichuan Xuduan Medicinal Materials", filling the gap of no provincial standard for this variety.
All these years, we have always kept in mind the old saying that good herbs make good medicine. The Quality Inspection Department has 8 full-time staff members. Besides conducting routine tests on the properties, identification and content of each batch of medicinal materials, they will also be sent to a third-party institution for testing of 33 types of pesticide residues and 18 kinds of heavy metals. Those that do not meet the standards will be destroyed rather than released from the factory. The planting base does not use chemical fertilizers but only organic fertilizers. Pest control relies on yellow board trapping and biological pesticides. Even the irrigation water needs to be regularly tested for heavy metals and pesticide residues. In 2022, a batch of aconite was found to have excessive sulfur dioxide residue by 902kg. Although the customer suggested that the standard could be relaxed, we still returned all of it to the furnace for re-drying, spending an extra 150,000 yuan. However, this earned us the title of a contract-abiding and creditworthy enterprise that year.
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