In the 100,000-grade purification workshop of Shijiazhuang Guanling Packaging Co., Ltd., a new fully automatic intelligent high-speed food can (milk powder can) production line entered large-scale production in mid-to-late October 2021. It is understood that this production line adopts internationally leading fully automatic high-speed can-making and online detection technology, capable of producing 250,000 milk powder cans in a day and night.

Workers are operating on the milk powder can production line. Photo by Zhang Feng.

This project, supported by the county committee and the county government of Xingtang, took only 106 days from negotiation to official production. Now the annual production capacity reaches 150 million cans, and it is currently the largest high-speed, intelligent, and environmentally friendly food can production line in Hebei Province. Liang Jun, the deputy general manager of Guanling Company (person in charge of Xingtang), introduced that by jointly developing with the equipment manufacturer, Guanling Packaging has become the first milk powder can production company to use machinery for stacking pallets, and this advanced process is being promoted throughout the country.

This project is an important part of the dairy industry chain in Xingtang County, filling the gap in the can-making and packaging link of Xingtang's dairy industry, and can ensure the supply of milk powder cans for four dairy companies such as Junlebao Taihang Dairy, reducing the logistics costs of local enterprises.

The outline of the dairy industry cluster is beginning to take shape.

Xingtang County is a strong county in national milk production and a famous county for the dairy industry in Hebei Province, with 117 various dairy enterprises including large-scale dairy cattle breeding, dairy product production and processing, agricultural and forage machinery, feed processing, and veterinary medicine production. Among them, there are 44 industrial enterprises and 73 large-scale dairy cattle farms. The dairy cattle inventory is 64,000 heads, with a daily production of 850 tons of fresh milk.

Junsheng Dairy Farm Milking Parlor. Photo by Zhang Feng.

Xingtang's dairy industry was identified as a "Hebei Province Small and Medium Enterprise Demonstration Industry Cluster" after re-examination in 2016, becoming a key county-level characteristic industry cluster. In 2019, it passed the second re-examination of Hebei Province and became a county-level characteristic industry cluster under the leadership of the deputy governor of the provincial government. The cluster mainly has 3 famous trademarks in China, such as Want Want, Wantzi, and Junlebao, and has 12 famous products in Hebei Province, such as Tieqi Lishi (feed), Zhongnuo (machinery), Wu Ye (machinery), and other Hebei Province famous trademarks.

Developing towards higher quality and a complete industrial chain.

According to the requirements of "large-scale breeding, standardized production, and information management," Xingtang is focusing on improving the quality of dairy products in breeding farms, promoting the construction of smart farm projects, and making supervision information-based and monitoring normalized.

Milk powder production line is ramping up production. Photo by Zhang Feng.

The county has used special funds from higher authorities to create 21 intelligent farm projects, upgraded and transformed 44 family farms, and ensured a further improvement in the level of breeding facilities and equipment. Actively using financial interest subsidies and guarantee subsidies, accelerating the expansion of high-quality lactating cows, encouraging large-scale dairy cattle farms to purchase 6,000 high-quality lactating cows externally. Using special funds for sex-controlled frozen semen at the provincial level, increasing the subsidy for good breeding, and breeding more than 7,000 high-quality reserve heifers to date. Implementing a special supervision system for milk stations and milk trucks, according to the traceability system for the quality and safety of milk sources for infant formula milk powder, legally and in accordance with regulations, conducting full coverage sampling inspections of milk stations and transport vehicles related to the milk source of infant milk powder, with a sampling pass rate of 100%. In 2021, 12.09 million yuan of national "grain to feed" subsidy funds were used to complete the whole-plant corn silage of 180,000 mu, further ensuring the quality of breeding from the source.

Development Zone Guanling Milk Powder Can Production Line Workshop. Photo by Zhang Feng.

Next, the county will further promote the construction of high-quality milk source bases and the upgrading and transformation of dairy enterprises, take innovation as the first driving force to promote the high-quality development of county-level characteristic industries, implement the growth plan for technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises, strive to create a number of national specialized and refined "little giant" enterprises, single-champion enterprises, support cluster enterprises to go to the cloud and use the cloud, and accelerate the connection and integration of technology, logistics, information, and capital flows on the cloud.

According to the "Xingtang County Dairy Industry Cluster Development Plan (2019-2025)", by 2025, the county's dairy cattle inventory will reach 80,000 heads, more than 500 dairy cattle farms will reach 95%, the annual production of fresh milk will exceed 500,000 tons, the total number of cluster enterprises will reach more than 220, and the revenue of the dairy industry cluster will exceed 11 billion yuan. A new situation of fully intelligent and fully industrial chain development of Xingtang's dairy industry cluster is accelerating.