加拿大Hytrend-誓做健康食品和环保技术研发北美领军品牌

Canada Hytrend - Be the Leading Brand in R&D of the Healthy Food and the Environmental Technology in North America

Company Showcase – Successful Developing in Canada

The epidemic that swept the world has changed many people's life, but the changes are more of business logic. While some companies shrank sadly, some companies ushered in the dawn of their perseverance, and a Chinese-Canadian company leveraged this opportunity.

Hytrend, English represents High trend, high trend. This is a healthy food and environmental technology research and development company located in Greater Vancouver, BC, Canada. It is led by Chinese entrepreneurs. The company did not close under the epidemic, but it has successively harvested product suppliers from North American chain giants Costco and DOLLARAMA and are negotiating Cooperation with the Canadian fresh supermarket chain giant Loblaw Company.

In 2019, Yuntao Zheng, the founder and CEO of Hytrend Investment Group, led the team to settle in Bizfield Accelerator Inc. in Canada for incubation.

Before going to Canada, Yuntao Zheng, a successful entrepreneur, has been deeply involved in the seafood industry for nearly 20 years. With the corporate philosophy of honest management, his business travels’ footprints have spreaded to dozens of countries at home and abroad. He not only won the title of "Lobster No. 1 Brother" in the industry, his "Dayuchang" JD Store was awarded as an excellent store in the seafood industry in 2016.

With the expansion of his business, Mr. Zheng stands in a higher position to understand the entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship has no borders. When Mr. Zheng visited the business and the fishery environment of BC, Canada during the Bizfield North American Innovation and Entrepreneurship Angel Investment Study Tour in March 2018, he was convinced that Vancouver is a fertile soil that can nourish multinational businesses.

In March 2008, Yuntao Zheng (the person on the right) followed Bizfield entrepreneurship study tour group to attend VANTEC Angel Investment Meeting.

In June 2018, Ying Chu, the CEO of Bizfield, led the team to represent Hytrend to attend the BC Seafood Show in Canada. The exhibition was one of the largest seafood industry trade events in the Pacific Northwest, attracting countless suppliers, purchasers, distributors, manufacturers, industry leaders and government representatives every year. More than 50 exhibitors at the scene, including various wild fishermen and aquaculture companies, are a good opportunity to find grassroots suppliers. In the exhibition, Bizfield team represented Hytrend to conduct in in-depth discussions with 12 seafood suppliers; established strategic partnerships with 3 logistics providers; and multiple officers (from Canada’s Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Export Navigator, etc.) to establish contacts. The detailed data and information have brought Mr. Zheng more confidence and expectation to start a business overseas.

In June 2018, Ying Chu, the CEO of Bizfield, represented Hytrend to attend Canada Seafood Show. The picture on the left is the group photo of Ying Chu (Left) and the officer of Canada’s Ministry of Agriculture and Agri-Food. The picture on the right is the full view of the seafood show.

In the summer of 2019, Yuntao Zheng successfully landed in Vancouver and started his ideal entrepreneurship. At the beginning of the business, Mr. Zheng simply wanted to use the unique deep-sea cold water red sea cucumber as raw material in Vancouver, Canada, and adopted the unique instant quick-frozen sea cucumber technology, which will eliminate the need for soaking and hair-forming steps, and provide convenient and delicious quick-frozen instant sea cucumber products to Chinese people living in North America. At present, the product has obtained the qualification of Costco global supplier, and will land in Toronto Costco supermarket for trial sale in September 2021. If the trial sale is qualified, the purchase of upstream sea cucumber raw materials will exceed 1,000 tons. In the next two years, this extremely cost-effective product will not only be sold at Costco in Canada, but will also enter Costco in the United States and Costco in China.

Hytrend’s Canadian cooked frozen sea cucumber products

With Mr. Zheng's gradual understanding of the local seafood retail market, and with his keen business sense, he discovered another gold mine-paper bags of domestic food waste that is compostable. At one day’s noon, Mr. Zheng attended a BBQ dinner organized by his friends and found that the food waste was placed in a small paper bag. When he heard that such a small paper bag could sell for $1, he immediately realized it was a business opportunity.

From the discovery of business opportunities to the final harvest of orders, it is destined to be a very difficult process.

The first challenge is the manufacturing technique. For food waste compostable paper bags, the most critical thing is to solve the water leakage. As we all know, food waste in the kitchen often contains a lot of moisture. If it is a plastic bag, there is no need to worry about moisture. However, if it is a paper bag, how to solve the problem of water leakage of the paper is very critical. One solution is to apply a waterproof coating on the inside of the paper bag. However, because Western countries implement compostable treatment for kitchen waste, non-toxic waterproof materials are also required, and the effect of composting must not be affected. The thickness of the coating also has a great impact on the production, composting effect and cost of the product. How to overcome these technical problems?

When Mr. Zheng contacted more than a dozen Chinese factories, it happened that he contacted an old customer who could produce this kind of paper bags. In order to produce this kind of paper bags, the factory improved the equipment. For this reason, Mr. Zheng went back to China and tackling key problems with technicians at the factory. This equipment currently only has a manufacturer in the United States, and the price of a device is as high as three million US dollars. The equipment in the Chinese factory is not only much lower in cost than the American equipment, but also has a great improvement in process accuracy. At present, the product has registered a Canadian manufacturing process patent and obtained a provisional patent number.

To verify the quality of the product, Mr. Zheng took the paper bags to two authorized laboratories in Germany and Belgium. After a year of experimentation, he obtained an experimental report on the environmental protection of percentage composting. In addition to this report, Mr. Zheng also spent nearly half a year on obtaining the global composting effect certification of BPI in the United States. BPI certification is the most authoritative certification for composting technology in the United States. The certification process is very strict to ensure that items can be safely recycled back into the soil in commercial composting facilities. In addition to the US certification, Hytrend also applied for the Canadian BNQ composting agency certification, which is a product quality certification that is stricter than the US BPI certification. It took a total of 8 months to obtain the authoritative certification.

At present, the global leading brand of food waste compostable paper bags is known as "Bag to Earth". As a new brand, Hytrend food waste compostable paper bags have lower cost of ownership and lower price. It is leak-proof, odor-proof, strong and durable. Composting is safe and environmentally friendly, and some technologies are pioneered by Hytrend in the world.

At present, the product has entered Canada's largest one-dollar store chain-DOLLARAMA (it has more than 1,300 stores in Canada and it is listed on the main board of the TSX), and is negotiating with Loblaw Company, Canada's largest fresh food chain supermarket, which has 2,400 stores in Canada Branch.

Hytrend’s Compostable Paper Bags lay on Dollarama’s goods shelf for selling (Product name: 100% COMPOSTABLE PAPER BAGS for KITCHEN ORGANICS WASTE)

In the entrepreneurial process, Mr. Zheng also met his business partners-three local Chinese. They not only formed a united entrepreneurial team, but also solved financial and human resource problems. As of July 2021, Hytrend was not adversely affected by the epidemic. On the contrary, it has received huge trial sales orders.

Mr. Zheng's high spirits fully proved the necessity of Chinese companies going overseas. It also fully proved the huge potential of the Canadian market. It is a market where an order can exceed 100 million yuan is absolutely attractive to Chinese entrepreneurs that cannot be ignored.

When the CEO of Bizfield Ying Chu asked Mr. Zheng about his current business plans, Mr. Zheng claimed he needs the capital injection to support the purchase of the raw material and the production with the finalization of orders. Currently, a Chinese factory has promised to invest 60 million RMB ($120,000 CAD) to transform its product line, but there is still a funding gap. In addition to planning to build a local warehouse in the eastern and western regions of Canada to improve the supply efficiency, Mr. Zheng also hopes to transform 15 production equipment to meet the order requirements. He hopes to obtain the much-needed financial support through Bizfield financial services to successfully complete these orders of several billion yuan.

Group photo of Bizfield’s CEO Ying Chu (left) and the Founder of Hytrend Yuntao Zheng (right) conversation

When Ying Chu asked Mr.Zheng if there are suggestions for Chinese entrepreneurs to start a business in Canada, Mr.Zheng replied “I have been to many countries in the world, including United States and Japan. After the two year stay in Canada, I think Canada is the most friendly country for Chinese entrepreneurs. Canada is a developed country and therefore consumers in this country have spending power. The hard working spirit of our Chinese entrepreneurs and the lean manufacturing of our Chinese factories have brought greater competitiveness to our products. I just want to say that there are many opportunities in Canada!