Making small peas into a big industry

On August 24th, in the finished product warehouse of Yantai Dingfeng Biotechnology Co., Ltd., inspectors from the Yantai Customs Office in Zhaoyuan, under the jurisdiction of Qingdao Customs, are conducting a local inspection of a batch of pea protein that is about to be exported to the Netherlands.

In recent years, with the rise of the global trend of healthy eating, pea protein has been favored by the European and American markets due to its advantages such as no allergens and high nutritional value. From the "supporting role" of the vermicelli industry, pea protein has become the "leading role" of export to earn foreign exchange.

In the early years, our factory processed peas and starch into vermicelli, and the remaining separation liquid and soybean residue were basically discarded as waste, which not only polluted the environment but also wasted resources, "said Zhao Zhenxia, Business Manager of the Customs Department of Yantai Dingfeng Biotechnology Co., Ltd. Nowadays, the recovery rate of pea protein has reached 85%, and the waste has become high value-added edible pea protein, with a value of up to 25000 yuan per ton, directly increasing the added value by 5 to 10 times.

Relying on a small pea, Yantai Zhaoyuan has gone from traditional fan processing to becoming the world's largest pea protein production base. At present, Zhaoyuan has gathered 8 large-scale pea protein enterprises with an annual output of over 200000 tons, accounting for more than 80% of the global market share. The products are exported to more than 30 countries and regions including the European Union, Brazil, the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

The protein industry is getting bigger and bigger, and the international market has increasingly high requirements for enterprises. Yantai Customs has tailored measures to facilitate the import and export of agricultural products, helping Zhaoyuan's deep processed pea products go global.

We have precisely cultivated AEO advanced certification enterprises for characteristic agricultural products, reducing inspection time by 60%, and 'cloud issuance' has shortened certificate issuance time to 10 minutes. ”Diao Wei, the head of the Inspection Department of the Yantai Customs Office in Zhaoyuan, introduced that the customs has also implemented the "conditional removal" model for pea raw materials, which greatly saves enterprises' demurrage and storage costs.

After obtaining AEO qualification, orders are easier to negotiate, customers trust more, and certificate issuance and sampling for inspection are more convenient, giving us more confidence in going global! ”Guo Shaojie, International Trade Manager of Yantai Shuangta Food Co., Ltd., said.

Customs data shows that in the first seven months of this year, Zhaoyuan City exported 57000 tons of pea protein, a year-on-year increase of 29.84%. (Kong Xiangxu, Zhang Fuxi/text)