Digital Warehouse, Finance and Traceability Drive Full-chain Upgrade of Wudu Chinese Prickly Ash Industry in Gansu
Per Xinhua News dispatches, Longnan Modern Chinese Prickly Ash Industrial Park in Wudu District, Longnan City of Gansu Province has rolled out four integrated functional systems centred on on-site quality supervision warehouses, drawing on Wudu’s reputation as China’s Hometown of Chinese Prickly Ash to lift industrial efficiency and product value across the whole supply chain.
The park delivers zero-cost storage and seamless cross-regional logistics coordination for all industry participants. Both on-site production warehouses and national forward distribution hubs offer full-cycle free warehousing alongside complimentary unified packaging, delivering a one-stop service covering stockpiling right through to outbound shipment. Intelligent digital links connect local storehouses with the nationwide network of transit depots to enable direct delivery from growing zones to consumer markets. Individual farmers’ standalone warehousing expenses fall by 70 per cent under this framework, while precision controlled-atmosphere storage units resolve quality degradation issues including discoloration, flavour loss and weakened numbing taste, stabilising product quality for over 95 per cent of stock held for a full year.
Tailored inclusive financial support operates as a free integrated service within the industrial park, consolidating resources from commercial banks and supply chain financiers. New financing instruments based on warehouse receipts, operating cash flow records and pre-sales contracts cover between 70 and 80 per cent of capital requirements for individual growers, specialised farming co-operatives and downstream supply chain operators.
End-to-end production and trading services underpin consistent brand value uplift. Standardised contracted manufacturing is enforced across twelve sequential production phases including sorting, dehydration, grading and packaging, fully complying with criteria for nationally protected geographical indication goods. Uniform 50-kilogram packaging sacks are supplied at no charge by park operators. A multi-channel sales framework merges online traffic generation and offline experiential retail; official storefronts are maintained on mainstream e-commerce platforms paired with live-stream sales originating directly from growing plots, while offline presence spans national wholesale food markets and industry promotional fairs to distribute Wudu Chinese Prickly Ash across domestic territories at improved market rates.
Full lifecycle quality oversight is anchored by a three-party governance model involving local government, agricultural trade associations and industrial operators. Distributed blockchain traceability technology logs every stage digitally, recording exact growing plots, harvest timelines and all processing workflows. Consumers may retrieve complete product records instantly via a WeChat mini-program, establishing full traceability of origins, verifiable quality benchmarks and clear accountability to safeguard the nationally recognised geographical indication brand of Wudu Chinese Prickly Ash.
Development of Longnan Modern Chinese Prickly Ash Industrial Park unfolds across three distinct construction phases. Phase One, completed with total investment of 100 million yuan over a fifty-mu site, hosts complete processing lines handling 2,500 tonnes of fresh and dried prickly ash each year, an oil tank zone with 1,500 cubic metres of storage capacity, a production line capable of manufacturing 5,000 tonnes of prickly ash oil annually, a 2,000-tonne intelligent controlled-atmosphere forward supervision warehouse, and a 1,000-square-metre exhibition venue dedicated to China’s prickly ash sector. Annual comprehensive industrial output from Phase One facilities stands at 250 million yuan.
Phase Two carries a planned total investment of 200 million yuan, with construction scheduled for a 5,000-tonne fresh prickly ash dehydration line, a 4,000-tonne controlled-atmosphere cold store and a production line processing 5,000 tonnes of dried prickly ash. Projected annual output upon full operation reaches one billion yuan. A ten-thousand-tonne shared intelligent storage complex will form the core of Phase Two, incorporating free warehousing, integrated financial advisory, national sales matching and digital quality monitoring within a single compound. The development creates a unified platform merging warehousing and processing, technical research and innovation, and incubation for agricultural operators, enabling consolidated bulk storage, standardised mass production and centralised distribution. Dynamic stock rotation via seasonal stockpiling and off-peak sales narrows extreme fluctuations in prickly ash procurement prices from a band of ±40 per cent down to ±15 per cent.
Phase Three is set to receive total investment of 120 million yuan for a 5,000-litre supercritical carbon dioxide extraction production line, forecast to generate an annual output value of 2.5 billion yuan once commissioned.
Wudu District has prioritised Chinese prickly ash as a core industry that advances ecological conservation, industrial vitality and household income growth, following a development strategy focused on expanding cultivation scale, lifting product quality, extending processing chains and boosting overall economic returns. The spatial layout framework labelled One City, Two Parks, Three Centres leverages local natural endowments and geographical indication certification, guided by principles of zoned planting clustering, concentrated industrial park development, industrialised operational logic and integrated supply chain expansion. A complete industrial ecosystem spans cultivation foundations, value-added deep processing, national wholesale distribution, technological digital empowerment and agri-cultural tourism integration, establishing Wudu as a national hub for Chinese prickly ash production chains, market price benchmark centre and export base.
The One City designation refers to China’s Chinese Prickly Ash Industrial City, a compound housing six integrated functions: bulk commodity trading and distribution, agricultural technology showcases, new product research, financial conferences, cultural tourism and professional brand management, delivering all-in-one services covering every link of the agricultural supply chain. Two Parks cover the second-phase expansion of Longnan Modern Chinese Prickly Ash Industrial Park alongside Wudu Prickly Ash Integrated Development Demonstration Industrial Park, facilitating a shift from scattered individual cultivation to concentrated industrial cluster operation. Three Centres represent three regional wholesale hubs for local special agricultural goods, building a digitally connected service network covering every township to bridge logistical gaps between rural fields and industrial parks, easing longstanding challenges for growers selling harvests and processors securing consistent raw material supplies.
Total land under prickly ash cultivation across Wudu District remains steady at one million mu, covering 650 administrative villages distributed across 37 towns and sub-districts. Full-year output reached 37,200 tonnes in 2025, with aggregate industrial output hitting 4.4 billion yuan. Average annual disposable income derived solely from prickly ash production for residents in core growing zones stands at 4,350 yuan, accounting for over 65 per cent of total household earnings for farming families. The industry delivers stable income growth to 72,000 local households, with suitable terrain across the whole district now utilised for commercial prickly ash cultivation. Wudu ranks first nationwide among all primary producing counties in five key metrics: total cultivation acreage, annual output volume, aggregate industrial output value, consistent product quality and the proportion of household income generated from prickly ash farming.
Local agricultural management bodies will press ahead with full summer planting arrangements across the district, rolling out further upgrades to intelligent cold storage, automated processing equipment and blockchain traceability terminals within the industrial park complex. Trading teams will continue to scale national and cross-border distribution channels for branded Wudu prickly ash products, while technical research divisions advance extraction and refinement technology to unlock higher-value derivative goods for domestic and overseas consumer markets.
