Peaches have taken on an auspicious hue as buyers' trucks line up in the village, creating the busiest sales season of the year in Hujaying Village, Yukou Town, Pinggu District. Unlike previous years, a batch of large peaches grown here has been exported to Singapore for the first time, reaching international dining tables.
On August 19, Beijing Customs announced that 260 boxes of Pinggu peaches were recently exported to the "Lion City," marking the first commercial export of Pinggu peaches and representing an important step forward in the international development of regional agriculture.
"Fruit growers all say these are the 'top scholars among peaches,'" said Fang Husheng, head of the Tianzhenggyuan Cooperative in Hujaying Village, as he arrived at the export orchard early on the 19th. After parting the leaves and carefully examining the peaches' shape and color, Fang smiled. He told reporters that the export orchard grows two varieties of fresh peaches - fuzzy peaches and nectarines - each with proper fruit shape, uniform fuzz, and free from insects and disease. "Regular large peaches have a sugar content of about 10 degrees, but our batch exceeds 14 degrees. They're not only sweet and crisp but also have a rich fruit flavor."
The Pinggu peaches exported to Singapore this time came from this orchard. "One peach can sell for 50 yuan, and people are competing to buy them!" Fang said. The 260 boxes of fresh peaches arrived in Singapore on August 9 and were completely sold out in just 4-5 days. "I heard that not only Chinese people like them, but locals are also willing to try them."
To get "Beijing flavor" exported overseas, Fang spent a full two years preparing. Going back to 2023, a Singaporean fruit supplier came to Hujaying Village. "This supplier's hometown is actually our Pinggu area. As soon as he entered the orchard, he gave a thumbs up," Fang recalled. It was at that moment that he conceived the idea of taking Pinggu peaches "overseas."
"It's like a baby learning to walk - the first step is the hardest," Fang said. Previously, Pinggu peaches had only been taken abroad as samples or exhibits, but no one had walked the path of commercial export. Commercial export refers to product exports that can achieve large-scale sales and represent market-oriented behavior aimed at profit.
What are the conditions for export? What procedures need to be followed? Confused, Fang knocked on the door of Pinggu Customs. "To export smoothly, we need to improve our management capabilities and ensure that product export quality meets local requirements," said Ding Xiaoyu, section chief of Comprehensive Business Section II at Pinggu Customs. After learning about the cooperative's export needs, customs established a special service team to guide them in establishing an export fruit orchard with quality safety control, disease and pest prevention and control, and product traceability management systems for export products.
Tianzhenggyuan Cooperative also became Beijing's only compliant fresh peach export orchard and packaging facility to obtain customs registration qualification.
With front-end issues resolved, how could the "overnight worry" peaches be delivered fresh overseas? To race against time, Pinggu Customs opened a "fresh green channel" for them, completing all export procedures within 4 hours. Combined with fresh-keeping paper technology developed by local Pinggu enterprises in collaboration with universities, the peaches can be kept fresh for about 10 days even at room temperature.
Entering the "Lion City" is just the first step in going "overseas." In the early hours of the 20th, another 100 boxes of Pinggu peaches will travel over 11,000 kilometers to fly to the Republic of Ghana in Africa. The cooperative is also preparing a second batch for export to Singapore, expected to exceed 500 boxes. Fang is also planning to expand the planting area of the export orchard, saying, "I'm fully confident about taking Pinggu peaches even further!"