Origin Agritech launches SEED+ Rural E-commerce business to target RMB 5 trillion rural merchant market in China

Origin Agritech Ltd., an agriculture technology and rural e-commerce company, today announced that the Company's new rural e-commerce subsidiary Beijing State Harvest Zhongying Network Technology Limited, Co. (ZhongyingNetwork) has been established and the new on-line application HUIYING has been launched to provide a rural e-commerce platform for merchandise across agricultural inputs to consumptions products.

The new e-commerce subsidiary Zhongying Network and its mobile app follow the strategy SEED+ Rural E-commerce with Blockchain Technologies, previously disclosed in March of this year (SEC 6-K filing dated as March 15, 2018). As described in March, the seed business is the core of all rural e-commerce business within an overall rural consumer market of over RMB 5 trillion. With twenty years of business experience and broad geographic exposure across China, along with a customer base of over 30,000 distributors/retailers and over 10 million farmers, Origin believes it is uniquely positioned in the rural e-commerce business to serve hundreds of millions of potential customers.

Through its new rural e-commerce business, Origin will significantly expand its business scope from its original corn seed to a wide range of products. The products to be offered on Origin's rural e-commerce platform will include, but will not be limited to, agricultural seed products (e.g., corn seeds, rice seeds, and vegetable seeds), other agricultural inputs (e.g., fertilizers and agricultural chemicals), foods, household products, and other consumer products.

"With the launch of our rural e-commerce business, we're ready to utilize the brand equity Origin has built in the rural regions of China and the strong trend of growing rural consumption," said Dr. James Chen, Origin's Chief Executive Officer. "We're excited with our new rural e-commerce business model, which we believe has many superior aspects and offers an innovative new e-commerce alternative to the consumers in thefast growing rural regions in China."

"The new rural e-commerce business presents a great growth opportunity for Origin, and more importantly it combines our current seed business in the rural regions with the technologies we have been developing, including the Blockchain technology in cooperation with the Elastos Foundation," said Dr. Gengchen Han, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "We believe the launch of our rural e-commerce business will provide significant value to Origin and our shareholders."