A quail farm in Rugao. [Photo/js.xinhuanet.com]

Several entrepreneurs have in recent years achieved great success after tapping the huge potential of the budding agricultural industry in Rugao, a county-level city in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu province.

Among them is Li Bing, the chairman of Banxi Ecological Breeding Co, a quail breeding base in Luzhuang village, Banjing town. After realizing that there were no large-scale quail breeding facilities that could rear more than 100,000 birds, Li sensed a business opportunity and constructed a 2.7-hectare quail farm in 2021.

Equipped with intelligent equipment that can automatically control humidity and temperature, feed quails, collect eggs, and clean manure, the farm currently rears about 580,000 quails that produce over 3,000 kilograms of eggs per day. According to Li, the farm has an annual output value of about 50 million yuan ($7.26 million).

Li is now planning to build on his success by constructing a 1,000-square-meter factory to carry out processing of quail meat and eggs.

Another successful entrepreneur is Wu Zhanmei, who has over the last 13 years been engaged in agricultural e-commerce, selling products such as cherries from Yantai, Shandong and navel oranges from South Jiangxi.

In 2019, Wu invested 10 million yuan to establish Jiangsu Yuanwei Agriculture Technology Co Ltd, an agricultural supply chain services company in Rugao that specializes in brand building, product marketing, warehousing and distribution, as well as training.

The company has since promoted brands for 85 agricultural products from 58 counties across China, sold more than 69,000 tons of them and generated sales revenue of 350 million yuan.

Wu said that she plans to invest 48 million yuan on a rapeseed oil factory to help villages in Rugao grow rape plants and develop the rural tourism industry.