Grower spreads her reach of corn sales

CHANGCHUN－Sui Shuxia, a 52-year-old farmer from Jilin province, has been busy with her workers, putting fresh corn in vacuum packs labeled in Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and other languages.

The trademark of Jilin Province Agricultural Sister-in-Law Food carries the image of Sui, who grew up in an impoverished family of six living on meager yields from a 3,000-square-meter cornfield.

Sui started her business only eight years ago, but her Sister-in-Law brand of vacuum-packed fresh corn can be bought in dozens of countries in Europe, South America and the Middle East.

Sui had no idea corn－the traditional food staple in her hometown－would make her fortune.

To earn a living, she had followed in her father's footsteps selling snacks, driving taxis, running restaurants and selling auto parts and mineral water. But none of the ventures had anything to do with farming, which only reminded her of childhood poverty.

It was in 2012 when a friend asked her for help to contact corn suppliers in Northeast China that it occurred to her that her future business was at her doorstep.

"I thought 'Why am I still running around?' I should return to the cornfields and do what I do best," Sui said.

In her hometown of Gongzhuling, she converted a mineral water packing facility into a corn processing plant, registered a trademark, bought equipment and contracted growers.

Over 400,000 ears of waxy corn were harvested in the autumn of 2012. But due to her lack of marketing experience, Sui had to sell the corn at a low price.

"After the setback, I learned to conduct market research and found there was a huge demand for sweet corn overseas," she said.

Sui switched from growing glutinous waxy corn to sweet corn and signed a contract with a Shanghai food trading company to gain access for her products to overseas markets.

This time, she worried about her production capacity, as the order required 864,000 ears of sweet corn in 12 shipping containers.

To meet the orders, Sui borrowed money, hired extra workers, bought additional equipment and worked overtime. The vacuum-packed corn was eventually delivered to Kuwait and later sold in Iran, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.

Sui's venture won support from the local government, which helped her explore the Japanese market in 2014.

She built a production workshop to meet good manufacturing standards to help her take her produce to more overseas markets.

Sui's corn products hit the Chilean market in 2015, the South Korean market in 2016 and the French market in 2017.

Her corn has also started to win over domestic consumers in recent years, with her waxy, sweet and black corn products sold in stores and online.

She has established 16 planting bases in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces, with a total producing area of 1,333 hectares and an annual output of 25,000 metric tons.

By the end of this year, the revenue of Sui's firm is expected to exceed 150 million yuan ($21 million), employing more than 1,000 people.

"My hometown is located in one of the world's three golden corn belts. I hope the corn yield from the black soil can be shipped around the world," Sui said.