The Shanxi Xinghuacun Fenjiu Alcoholic Drinks Group Co Ltd was established in March 2002, after the reorganization of the Shanxi Xinghuacun Fenjiu Alcoholic Drinks Group, as a wholly State-owned company.
Its main products are the popular Fenjiu and Zhuyeqing beverages and its own “Xinghuacun” (apricot flower village) brand. The company has had an established reputation for a long time and is one of 520 key Chinese enterprises and 12 authorized Shanxi province enterprises.
It is located in Fenyang, the home of many Chinese alcoholic drinks and related culture. Xinghuacun has some unique geographical advantages, such as water resources and organisms for beverage making and this remarkable place has produced some outstanding people. It has been distilling alcoholic beverages for more than 3,000 years, going back to the Shang and Zhou dynasties (16th century – 256 BC).
Fenjiu liquor is a fairly typical example of lightly scented liquor, which is produced by a method that has been handed down since ancient times and benefits from traditional technology, craftsmanship, and brand culture. It has a reputation of softness, a sweet taste, and long aftertaste and is popular with Chinese and foreigners.
The Fenjiu name was already known during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-581 AD), and was popular with the Wucheng emperor of the Northern Qi (561-565) as a drink for the palace. the name is recorded in the 24 Dynasties History and, during the late Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), Du Mu, a prominent poet, mentioned it in his work, “May I ask where the restaurant is, the herd boy pointed far away to apricot flower village.” In 1915, Fenjiu won a gold medal at the Panama Pacific International Exposition.
The Xinghuacun Fenjiu Distillery was founded in 1949 and is a State-owned business with a proud cultural heritage. It continues improving the quality of its management system, by “Using [its] own unique features, while learning from others and absorbing the essence of others, while developing [its] own style”.
In 1952, Fenjiu was recognized as a famous national alcoholic beverage at the first national liquor show and one of the top four drinks in the country. In 1963, it won the renowned national liquor title and a gold prize, at the second national liquor show. Subsequently, it was honored on many occasions, and claimed renowned national liquor title five times in a row. The company’s Zhuyeqing (green bamboo leaf) brand was also declared a famous Chinese drink three times in a row and won five international gold prizes. Since the reforms and opening up of the late 1970s, the company has continued to improve its management and explore new markets and ways to make itself more competitive.
In 1986, it won a national highest-quality management prize and two years later, passed a product quality authentication test. In 1999, it got ISO-9001 quality system certification. By now, it has gone from a small workshop with only 36 employees in an old distillery with a dozen rooms, in 1949, to a large enterprise with 7,000 employees in a plant that covers a 2.3-million-square-meter space. The company has assets of 2 billion yuan, and an annual production capacity of 50,000 tons of quality liquor. It has sales of one billion yuan ($158.5 million) annually and exports worth $20 million, and pays 300 million yuan in State taxes. Its production facilities, technology, equipment, and research team are first-class and it focuses on producing top-quality liquor, while also dealing with other sectors of business.
