Industry testimonial: “We rely on technology marketing to bring real value to customers”

Beijing Hilink International Biotechnology – Mr. Zuo Jianbin, President.

Beijing Hilink International Biotechnology is a company founded in 2010, committed to using high-tech products to serve domestic and international feed companies.

How long have you been working with Lallemand Animal Nutrition’s products? Can you tell us how you feel about working with Lallemand Animal Nutrition?

The cooperation between Hilink and Lallemand Animal Nutrition began in October 2011, and we have been very pleased with it. Lallemand provides strong support for us in the Chinese market, especially in recent years, through its product promotion in the local market. The team shows a high degree of professionalism in their work, which also makes the cooperation very successful.

Hilink has been promoting LEVUCELL SB ( cerevisiae boulardii CNCM I-1079) in the Chinese market and achieved good results. Can you share with us your successful experience?

The Chinese market is different from other countries, the animal husbandry market is more complex. Take the local feed industry as an example, there is a large demand for commercial feed, with the continuous increase of China’s population. With the development of animal husbandry, the feed output has been steadily increasing. However, the total number of feed mills has actually decreased. Secondly, non-pollution, residue-free, green food has become the top consumption trend with the improving living standards. Therefore, as the source of quality and safety issues — animal feeds have received increasing attention.

Generally speaking, we have encountered some challenges in the Chinese market, but thanks to Lallemand Animal Nutrition products and their technical advantages, we have quickly found a good position in the market. Different from the other domestic and international companies that focus on relationship marketing, we mainly deploy technology marketing to bring real value to customers, guarantee the quality and stability of products, and — more importantly — ensure the efficacy of products‘ applications on animals. I can tell you that in the nearly 10 years of product promotion, almost no customers have been lost because of product quality or technical problems, which also makes us more convinced of the strategy we choose.

How have you tackled the challenges created by African swine fever?

African swine fever has been a heavy blow to domestic pig production. The live pig and sow stocks have dropped significantly year-over-year in 2019, which has brought us a lot of challenges. Today, the market has been recovering at a fast pace, faster than expected, and the whole picture is changing very fast. To face these challenges, first of all, we have increased efforts focusing on customer maintenance and also actively looked for new opportunities with new customers. However, it is much more difficult to expand new customers than before. In this context of African swine fever, customers’ biggest concern is biosecurity.

Controlling African swine fever is a difficult long-term struggle, what can you expect in the future?

First, the Chinese government attaches great importance to its support of the pig industry; second, the current high pig prices will stimulate investment in the pig industry and help some companies to resume production quickly. From this perspective, many things can be done. Some enterprises have chosen to alleviate the situation of decreased sow stock by retaining the crossbred sows in the farms. Technically speaking, three crossbred sows are not breeding sows. There are some challenges in keeping these sows as breeding sows, such as low productivity, decreased anti-stress ability, decreased milk production, etc.

Lallemand Animal Nutrition and the Yang Xiang Group conducted a trial together on LEVUCELL SB®, the trial results show that LEVUCELL SB® can improve sows’ anti-stress ability during the perinatal period, improve the colostrum quality and the health condition of newborn piglets, and it decreased the mortality rate.

Today, pig farms attach great importance to newborn piglets, which will bring us more opportunities. We will continue to leverage Lallemand’s scientific and technical advantages, cooperate with domestic experts and regularly invite international experts to communicate and guide work to China while combining with our in-depth understanding of the domestic market, we would bring true value to our customers to help them to be differentiated in the market and improve their competitive advantages in the market.