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Leili – Innovative Bio-stimulant Industry Pioneer

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Recently Ms. Tang Jie, the General Manager of Beijing Leili Marine Biological Industry Group took an interview with AgroPages, having shared with us their innovation and perseverance in the course of development.

Leili is an earliest algae bio-stimulant practitioner in China, who has taken the lead in the creation of functional fertilizer based upon algae bio-stimulant. With its leading technology, in-depth market exploration and strong technical support, Leili has successfully released its representational products LEILI Alga600, LEILI2000, SoftGuard and Algasoil-Algal to more than 80 countries and regions, being highly recognized worldwide.

As a high-tech marine biological enterprise established 23 years ago, Leili’s success in algae bio-stimulant is not incidental, but reflects company’s unremitting effort on technical innovation and business transformation, as well as continued process to shape the competitive edge of its own. The success is an outcome accumulated after long year’s hard try.

Using “technical concentric circle positioning” to shape a high-tech enterprise

Traditional meaning of fertilizer could mean a resource-based production with low technical content at a low business entry level, but this is not the case with algae fertilizer. Leili utilizes an originated algae biological technology, which is improved from time to time to refresh the status of this industry. Leili uses its creative “technical concentric circle” method to build the enterprise into a high-tech alga bio-stimulant industry leader, which proves by the continually updated product quality and professional service that algae bio-stimulant will become an important solution for precision agriculture.

The “technical concentric circle” method created by Leili (Figure 1) is a product combination and solution formed using Leili’s creative patented ingredient as a core which incorporates different application fields. Consequently, the targeted field application technology is worked out toward the final objective to solve problems existing with the crop field.

Leili is born with seaweed fertilizer, known for algae fertilizer, but the General Manager Tang Jie does not wish users to always associate Leili with a seaweed fertilizer manufacturer. Madam Tang Jie explained that “the concept of seaweed fertilizer is expressed according to its raw material at a primary level while we are working as positioned toward a functional solution. The positioning integrates raw material, technology, field crop functional effect and solution. We believe that where product comes from is not important, what is important is the value we would provide to users.”

“If we say Leili’s first-stage development was the focus of seaweed fertilizer, then we can say the second-stage development is on the algae bio-stimulants”, which requires more specific functions from the product to meet users’ needs in more depth. To do so, it relies on Leili’s core patented ingredient – Algen, Kelmost and Minecal. Algen is essentially a semiochemical, which plays an important role in plant physiological conduction and nutrition transfer. It is easily absorbed by plant root, stem and leaf. It can accelerate conduction speed, leverage hormone status between plant growth and generation stage, being widely applied to Leili’s creative crop solutions - LEILI Alga600, LEILI2000 and LEILI Harvest Powder.

Another Leili’s worth-mentioning patented ingredient Kelmost is generated to solve the soil problem which is closely related to crop growth. The technology enables active ingredient like seaweed mucopolysaccharide to form into a micelle structure and maintains its strong absorbability so as to lock the soil nutrient to allow for soil to be more fertile.

Each year Leili spends 8% of its sales on technical innovation, product development and field efficacy. Besides the algae bio-stimulant patent technology, Leili makes further exploration into the formula to bring in animal-sourced extracts - Softguard+, Amino acid, Aminomax, Humic acid, Humic Total, Microorganism, BioGuard™ and Multimix™.

“Bio-balance theory” guided product development strategy

According to long year practices, Leili raised the concept of Bio-balance course in 2014, being used as a guidance for Leili’s product innovation and upgrading, which has performed well and highly recognized by the market.

The “bio-balance theory” is based upon biology and ecology, it takes sea water, seaweed, soil, crops and human as the study target, uses modern biological technology to improve the imbalance of environment between ocean and land, solve the soil ecological imbalance problem, and correct the crop nutrient deficiency in order to achieve balanced growth of crops, secure product’s quality and nutrient, promote human health, and establish a harmonious biology cycle.

Looking at the agricultural balance system in general, as being based upon Leili’s creative patent and derivative applications, Leili has developed 3 major categories of product - crop regulation and health care, balanced nutrition of crops, soil improvement and repair covering 31 product varieties, focusing on issues like nutrient disorders, water disorders, temperature disorders, immune disorders, soil pH imbalance, nutrient imbalance, flora imbalance and environmental imbalance (Figure 2).

Taking an example of Leili’s LEILI Alga600, which not only regulates root ambient soil to facilitate plant growth but also facilitates the growth and development of main root, side root and fine root, because the core ingredient Algen of LEILI Alga600 contains regulatory substance and precursor substance required for plant rooting.

So far Leili’s customized solutions have landed 80 countries and regions worldwide serving agrochemical groups, professional cooperatives, planting base, large growers and individual growers across Asia, South America, East Europe covering India, Saudi, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Dominica, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Czech, Slovak, Hungry, as well as China’s Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Fujian and Sichuan for applications to banana, apple, peanut, potato, grape, strawberry and other vegetables.

To be a new business mode creator

Tang Jie’s open, positive manner and unrestrained idea are at all times reflected by her talk, saying that “in an internet time, product ownership value is much lower than the value of applications.” Based on her understanding of the industry, the cross-sector business logic is interpreted by Leili in a new sense for agricultural industry. Leili is actively expediting a new business mode as how to use application service to raise the product value, Leili would wish to become a new business mode creator.

In face of the difficultness to break through the traditional business mode, Leili put forward an innovative program of “superior product – superior network – superior people”, which aims to use superior product supported by excellent people and partner to establish good network to channel market and development.

Back in 2014, Leili started establishment of global crop service platform to provide support and value-added service for pre-production, in-production and post-production of crops via technical promotion and field work (Figure 3). During the crop pre-planting stage, crop and soil are analyzed to provide growers with customized crop nourishing and soil conditioning solutions; during the crop growing period, a whole-course technical supervision is provided with track record; after harvesting, farm product branding and sales support are provided for growers. At present Leili has established 3 work teams respectively covering crop regulation, crop nutrition leverage, soil amendment, which are bringing about benefit to more and more growers via field demonstration and promotion.

Additionally Leili is actively exploring as how to implement the brand strategy to further get through to the farm product sales, as well as how to utilize internet to build broader sales network. A few days ago, Leili’s home gardening product series Beiyan became the first pilot commodity sold in China’s famous e-platform Tmall.

Welcome future opportunity and challenge with an open mind

With consumer’s increasing requirement for quality, the policy of reduction of use of fertilizer and pesticide in place, orderly proceeding of agricultural intensification and the overthrow of traditional agricultural business mode by the internet + strategy, the algae bio-stimulant industry is anticipated to embrace a new round of development.

An incremental market is surely going to bring more competitions. In face of the global competition and penetration of Chinese market by more and more bio-stimulant enterprises, Tang Jie appears to be confident in their competitiveness attributable to the distinctive product, differentiated marketing strategy and a supportive service team. Madam Tang Jie said that “professional competition is of value to industry development. We Leili are very open to the challenge; we also welcome cooperation with agrochemical, fertilizer or other enterprises to work together to contribute to the modern agriculture.”

In the years ahead, based on existing technology, Leili will concentrate on the 3 technical solutions and will upgrade its product series as well. Tomato, cucumber, apple, tangerine and potato will be the focuses of service while product functions will be further expedited toward application to field crops. As regards to international market, Leili is prepared to employ more staffs to form local sales team in targeted market to provide world market with satisfactory technical solution and first-class service.