How Live Streaming Powers Sales for a Sichuan Olive Oil Producer

Summary

Sichuan province in China is emerg­ing as a key player in the coun­try’s olive oil indus­try, with 452,000 mu of olive groves. Fattoria Zhongyi, a fam­ily-owned farm and mill in north­ern Sichuan, is using online sales and live stream­ing to sell its organic olive oil, with pro­duc­tion expected to reach 200 tons this year.

This is the sec­ond in a series of reports on the evo­lu­tion of China’s olive oil indus­try.

LANGZHONG, China – From the 7,000-meter peaks skirt­ing the east­ern edge of the Tibetan plateau to the fer­tile low­lands in the east, Sichuan province is known for its bold cui­sine and as the home­land of China’s giant pan­das.

It is also emerg­ing as a key player in China’s mod­est but expand­ing olive oil sec­tor.

According to Yu Ning, vice pres­i­dent of the olive sec­tion of China’s Forestry Economics Association, Sichuan hosts 452,000 mu (30,000 hectares) of olive groves — about one-fifth of China’s total.

The groves fol­low a north – south cor­ri­dor through the province, cling­ing to the rolling hills at the foot of the Tibetan plateau.

My jour­ney into this land­scape begins in Chengdu, the provin­cial cap­i­tal of 21 mil­lion peo­ple, where I meet the entre­pre­neur­ial 20-some­thing Ziyun Jin.

Jin, with shaggy hair, rim­less glasses and a chin­strap beard, speaks flu­ent English after study­ing visual design in New York City.

As we drive north along Chengdu’s ring roads, his phone chimes every few min­utes. ​“That sound is an online sale,” he says, turn­ing around from the pas­sen­ger seat with a grin.

We are head­ing to his family’s farm and mill, Fattoria Zhongyi, in north­ern Sichuan.

His father, Chongqing Jin — a lean man with a firm hand­shake and a sharp busi­ness sense — entered the olive sec­tor in 2011 after what he describes as an epiphany in Greece.

During a visit to the home­land of Koroneiki, one of the two vari­eties planted on the family’s 5,600 mu (373 hectares) of groves, he encoun­tered a 3,800-year-old olive tree.

Struck by its longevity and by the sim­i­lar­i­ties he noticed between Greece and Sichuan, he became con­vinced olive grow­ing was a busi­ness that could span gen­er­a­tions.

Yet, despite sit­ting on the same lat­i­tude as Tunisia, Sichuan’s cli­mate could not be more dif­fer­ent from that of the Mediterranean Basin.

According to research from Sichuan Agricultural University, the province’s olive-grow­ing regions receive 855 to 940 mil­lime­ters of rain­fall between May and December, and more than 1,000 mil­lime­ters annu­ally.

By com­par­i­son, Tunisia’s main olive-grow­ing region around Sfax receives only about 200 mil­lime­ters of rain in an entire year.

The high humid­ity in Sichuan pro­vides ideal con­di­tions for olive fruit fly and gloeospo­rium, pos­ing for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges to pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil.

As a result, Jin stated that the company’s har­vest spans approx­i­mately eight weeks, from early October to late November.

His phone con­tin­ues to chime through­out the three-hour drive north to Langzhong.

The his­toric city draws mil­lions of tourists each year for its pre­served archi­tec­ture and as the birth­place of Zhang Fei, the ancient gen­eral ven­er­ated for his loy­alty and integrity.

Many vis­i­tors stop at the cen­tral tomb of Zhang Fei to pray for good for­tune. Fattoria Zhongyi takes its name from him — an emblem of moral clar­ity and com­mit­ment to qual­ity that the Jins hope to reflect.

Over a quick lunch at a high­way rest stop, Jin reports 17,000 Renminbi (€2,065) in sales since we left Chengdu.

He said nearly all of the company’s olive oil is sold online. State-owned enter­prises account for 90 per­cent of pur­chases, offer­ing employ­ees stipends to buy prod­ucts from approved ven­dors. The remain­ing 10 per­cent is sold on the open mar­ket.

Most buy­ers are located in the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu, as well as the Shanghai munic­i­pal region.

According to the International Olive Council, China con­sumed an aver­age of 41,000 tons of olive oil annu­ally between 2022 and 2025 — growth that has stalled since 2014 but remains nearly triple the vol­umes from 2006 to 2009.

Ender Gündüz, for­mer head of the IOC’s econ­omy and pro­mo­tion unit, esti­mates China has 250 mil­lion poten­tial con­sumers yet to be reached.

Fattoria Zhongyi attracts almost all of its cus­tomers through live stream­ing on Douyin, the Chinese ver­sion of TikTok. Jin esti­mates that 90 per­cent of its free-mar­ket buy­ers pur­chase directly through these livestreams; app data show 34 per­cent return to buy again.

The fac­tory sits about 20 min­utes from Langzhong’s his­toric cen­ter, sur­rounded by hills cov­ered with decade-old olive trees.

As we pull into the court­yard — com­plete with a tea room, offices, show­room, mill and bot­tling line — a young sales­man posi­tions a smart­phone on a tri­pod and starts his six-hour shift.

“He didn’t know any­thing about olive oil, and now he’s an expert,” Jin says.

The sales­man works in five-minute cycles: two min­utes describ­ing the prod­uct, then three min­utes answer­ing ques­tions.

A small live-feed win­dow in the cor­ner of the stream dis­plays the four-ton-per-hour Haus milling line, which oper­ates 24 hours a day dur­ing har­vest.

Jin esti­mates pro­duc­tion will reach 200 tons of organic olive oil this year — a blend of Arbequina and Koroneiki — after an above-aver­age har­vest. Last year’s total was 130 tons.

Production is expected to con­tinue ris­ing as the com­pany plants an addi­tional 400 mu (approx­i­mately 27 hectares) of new trees each year. Five hun­dred mu (33 hectares) of Picual, planted four years ago, will soon begin bear­ing fruit.

Jin attrib­utes increas­ing yields to bet­ter prun­ing, though he acknowl­edges that Chinese grow­ers still have much to learn.

The com­pany has not yet iden­ti­fied the olive vari­eties best suited to the humid cli­mate of north­ern Sichuan.

Back on the livestream, the sales­man high­lights the company’s organic prac­tices.

Fattoria Zhongyi sells the early har­vest of its flag­ship prod­uct for 138 Renminbi (approx­i­mately €17) per 500-mil­li­liter bot­tle, and the later har­vest for 108 Renminbi (approx­i­mately €13).

“The price of our olive oil is very high, so for peo­ple who can afford it, the fact that it is organic is very impor­tant,” Jin said.

Organic pro­duc­tion presents addi­tional chal­lenges, par­tic­u­larly since most groves are sit­u­ated on steep ter­rain where mechan­i­cal har­vest­ing is impos­si­ble.

Teams of work­ers hand-pick the fruit and drive it down paved moun­tain roads to the mill. The com­pany also pur­chases olives from nearby farm­ers.

By the end of the visit, a delighted Jin announces that the day’s online sales have reached 30,000 Renminbi (€3,645).

The fig­ure eas­ily cov­ers the salesman’s salary and the 3,000 Renminbi (€365) he paid to pro­mote the livestream to tar­geted cus­tomers.

Waving good­bye, I board a train head­ing north­west from Langzhong toward Longnan, watch­ing as the rolling green hills fade into low-hang­ing clouds.