China’s largest oolong tea producer, Ping Shan Tea Group (0364), is considering widening its product range by acquiring plantation sites beyond Fujian province such as those for Pu’er in Yunnan

November 25, 2013 Leave a comment

Ping Shan Tea growth brews
Monday, November 25, 2013
China’s largest oolong tea producer, Ping Shan Tea Group (0364), is considering widening its product range by acquiring plantation sites beyond Fujian province such as those for Pu’er in Yunnan. Formerly named Huafeng Group, with focus on textile manufacturing, the firm changed its name last month after the injection of the tea business.General manager and executive director Cai Yangbo said it is seeking to sell the textile business whose profit margin is lower than that for tea.

Cai said his family moved into the tea business in 2007, spending 4 million yuan (HK$5.09 million) on 46.67 hectares of oolong tea plantation sites in Anxi.

The company has been increasing acquisition, culminating in the purchase of China Natural Tea Holdings in July this year for HK$2.49 billion.

The firm currently holds 2,586 hectares of plantations in Anxi.

In 2012, revenue from tea sales was 389 million yuan, while net profit was 191 million yuan. Between 2010 and 2012, the net profit grew by 30 percent annually.

Cai told of a production model involving the purchase of land from farmers who are given fertilizer and pesticide and are monitored in groups. The farmers then sell tea leaves to Ping Shan which refines, packages, and sells them. “Quality can be ensured. We will apply this model should we buy plantation sites in other places,” Cai said.

Only 10 percent of the revenue is contributed by retail sales under Ping Shan’s own brand in 27 self-operated shops and 119 other retail outlets. Cai hopes products will be available at 400 retail outlets by 2015. The rest is made up of wholesale revenues. The product is not exported.

Cai said the firm has been seeing acquisition opportunities in places beyond Anxi, such as Yunnan, for black tea to enrich the product range. It may also launch tea bags, green tea powder, and even open tea shops. STAFF REPORTER

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment