When QiaQia started its business, most of the sunflower seeds sold in the market were fried, which are relatively dirty. Thus it is inconvenient to eat by hand, and can cause inflammation. Therefore, the food safety cannot be guaranteed.

How to highlight the differentiation of products from peers? how to provide healthy and safe sunflower seed to customers? These questions have become the directions being considered by QiaQia at that time. Finally, it came up with the idea that using boiled sunflower seeds to compete with the fried sunflower seeds on the market, but there is no ready-made answers for production process and technical standards. QiaQia doesn’t even know what equipment to use to cook those seeds.

1.  Resourceful: Amazing equipments evolution

Daily used small pots and pans cannot solve the problem of mass production. The research team heard that the jacketed kettle in the beverage industry could cook large quantities of raw materials by steaming, so they decided to learn from it and have a try.

The first-generation equipment: Jacketed Kettle

The borrowed Jacketed kettle became the first generation of production equipment. It solved the problem of mass production in the initial stage. In any case, the foundling team took a step from nothing to something, but one production of 45kg at a time is not enough for QiaQia.

The second-generation equipment: Big Boiling Pool

When a man has something on his mind, he can relate anything to the things he cares about.  The inspiration of the “Big Boiling Pool” comes from a bath. However many problems were found in the use of the “Big Boiling Pool” after 2-3 months, for example, it’s difficult and dangerous to fish the seeds out of the pool. Therefore, improvements need to be continued.

The third-generation equipment: Waterwheel Boiler

To some extent, the waterwheel boiler can reduce fishing difficulties, and avoid the safety risk of the manual fishing, but new problems appeared. Although the waterwheel boiler was immersed in soup bases, half of the flower seeds floating on the soup cannot be fully tasted cooked, And the whole workshop was filled with steam all the time. Working in it was like taking a sauna.

The fourth-generation equipment: Automatic Pressure-cooker

From the jacketed kettle to the big boiling pool to the waterwheel boiler. QiaQia group has never stop developing production tools. Since the advent of automatic pressure-cooker, the nuts industry began to have its own standardized mass production tool. This made QiaQia the industry technical leader.

The automatic pressure-cooker has been practiced over and over again. It has also been upgraded for 8 times to provide more stable and safer production services for QiaQia.

2. The wisdom of trying everything: The evolution of drying equipments.

Drying machines are necessary for creating a crisp taste of the cooked sunflower seed. Although there are a lot of drying equipments on the market, no one can meet the need of QiaQia. In the case of finding the right equipment for drying, QiaQia group was facing the same problem as before of starting from scratch. In the process, the research team has an exceptionally keen sense of finding dryers. Every time they heard about a good drying plant, they would go to investigate it personally. Technologies from traditional to innovative, no one can escape from the trial range of the research team of QiaQia.

Early start: Oven

The original dryer was an oven, relying on artificial flip to make sure that every flower seed is baked evenly. The problem of drying was preliminarily solved, but a 20-hours’s baking time seems too long.

Efficiency promoting: Baking House

QiaQia borrowed an equipment where silkworm cocoons are roasted. This method reduced the time of drying from 20 hours to 8 hours, but the baking house requires burning coal and following environmental issues were increasingly obvious.

The age of steam: Radiator

Radiators, which are wildly used in north China for heating by steam, had entered the field of vision of the research team. Thus, QiaQia customized a set of steam radiators from relevant manufacturers to dry the seeds. The results gained a basic satisfaction.

Industry benchmarking: Customized Line Dryer

With the expansion of its scale, QiaQia has a greater say in the equipment market, and dryer manufactures were willing to accept the costumer order from QiaQia. After many attempts of customizing dryers, QiaQia finally choosed an American manufacture to customize its entire production line. The production line reflecting QiaQia’s standards is worth more than 10 million rmb. High price represents high productivity, high automation, high energy efficiency and hygiene, and it is also an Industry benchmarking that is hard to surpass.

Today, QiaQia’s corporative strategy focuses on the nuts category, not only to obtain the best sunflower seeds, but also to be the top producer of the nuts industry. QiaQia’s “Daily Nuts” is far ahead in sales, and behind the product strategy of “Safe, Stable and Fresh”, there is a higher demand from consumption upgrade. Higher consumption needs urged all departments of QiaQia to maintain high standards and requirements. The great wisdom of QiaQia lies in solving problems with all its strength and in being ahead of the norm.