1. Putting Three Things on One Map

In China's official industry classification, liquor, beverages and refined tea manufacturing fall under a single major category. They are grouped together not because the products are alike, but because they share a similar manufacturing logic: each starts from a kind of agricultural raw material and, through fermentation, pressing, roasting or filling, turns something from the field into a standardized product on the shelf. To read a province's performance in this industry is, in essence, to read how far it has carried its local farm resources down the processing chain.

Shaanxi happens to be a good sample for observing this. It is not the highest-output province in this sector, yet it holds a nationally recognized name in three separate sub-tracks: Xifeng in the Feng-aroma category of baijiu, apple juice concentrate that accounts for the bulk of China's exports in the beverage line, and Fu tea together with the green teas of Hanzhong and Ankang in refined tea. These three are not interlinked. They stand on different production regions, different processes and different markets, yet together they form the true character of this industry in Shaanxi.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute offers this overview without endorsing any company or investment judgment. It sets out only to clarify, from public information, the landscape of these three lines, the position of their leaders, and the difficulties each faces.

2. Liquor: The Feng-Aroma Pole Held Up by Xifeng

The story of Shaanxi baijiu can almost be distilled down to a single company: Xifeng.

Xifeng is the representative of the Feng-aroma type among Chinese baijiu, and this identity was not won after the fact. As early as the first National Liquor Appraisal in 1952, Xifeng was named a national-grade famous liquor alongside Moutai, Fenjiu and Luzhou Laojiao, making it one of the earliest four famous liquors. The Feng aroma sits between the strong and light aromas, and its use of raw-brick liquor cellars to store the spirit is the root that sets it apart from other types. When a single aroma type has only one core production region and one representative brand, that structure is both a barrier and a sign that the fate of the whole type is deeply tied to this one enterprise.

In 2023, Xifeng recorded sales revenue of 10.34 billion yuan, up 23 percent year on year, formally entering the ranks of ten-billion-yuan baijiu brands. From 5 billion yuan in 2019 to over 10 billion in 2023, Xifeng doubled its scale in four years. The structure of the growth is worth noting: that year, sales of the Red Xifeng series rose more than 100 percent, and sales of mid-to-high-end products priced above 100 yuan rose about 40 percent, suggesting this round of growth was not merely about volume but about lifting the product mix upward.

Capacity is being added on the same trajectory. Xifeng's 100,000-ton premium base-liquor production and supporting project carries a total investment of 14 billion yuan and is planned for completion by 2025, at which point the company's base-liquor capacity will exceed 150,000 tons, with hundreds of thousands of tons of base-liquor storage and finished-product capacity alongside. For a baijiu maker, base-liquor capacity and storage are the foundation of future volume, and this outlay points to a longer cycle of expansion.

But the hidden weakness of a single-aroma pole is also clear. Xifeng's revenue is heavily concentrated in its home province; prospectus materials show Shaanxi contributed about 70 percent of revenue, and opening up markets outside the province remains a long-term task. If an aroma type cannot leave its home base, the ceiling presses down right there. How to carry the recognition of the Feng aroma from Shaanxi to the rest of the country is the real question this enterprise must answer now that it has crossed the ten-billion threshold.

3. Beverages: Global Clout Pressed Out of a Basket of Apples

If baijiu is Shaanxi's face, apple juice concentrate is the harder inner layer of this industry. It does not rely on brand narrative; it relies on real capacity and export share.

Shaanxi is the world's largest base for processing and exporting apple juice concentrate. This is not a flourish but a statement backed by numbers: Shaanxi's apple juice concentrate exports account for about 60 percent of China's total and about 36 percent of the world's. As of mid-2022, the province had 16 apple juice concentrate processing enterprises with a combined production capacity of roughly 2,197 tons per hour. Basket after basket of apples from the Weibei plateau are pressed here into concentrate, packed into aseptic bags, and shipped to beverage production lines in Europe and America. This is the link of greatest global weight in Shaanxi's industry.

Two world-class leaders stand on this line. Shaanxi Haisheng Fruit Juice accounts for about 19 percent of global apple juice concentrate trade volume by export; Shaanxi Hengtong Juice Group accounts for about one-third of China's juice concentrate exports by sales, owns 13 juice processing plants with internationally advanced technology, and has annual juice concentrate capacity of more than 300,000 tons, ranking among the world's top in both capacity and output. Together, the two largely define the supply landscape of Chinese apple juice concentrate on the international market.

The industrial nature of this line is worth noting. Concentrate is a classic intermediate product. Its downstream customers are global beverage giants, and both its bargaining power and its prosperity are constrained by the dual pull of the international market and apple raw-material prices. Its strength lies in scale and stable supply capacity; its weakness lies in low added value and exposure to raw-material swings and overseas demand. Shaanxi's juice enterprises have in recent years extended into finished beverages and fresh-fruit cultivation and sales, precisely in an effort to step toward higher added value beyond the intermediate link of concentrate.

4. Refined Tea: The Two Maps of Fu Tea and Han Tea

Tea is the part of this industry with the deepest history and the greatest fragmentation in Shaanxi.

Start with the overall picture. Shaanxi's tea gardens cover about 2.9919 million mu, ranking 9th nationally; tea output is about 128,400 tons, ranking 11th; primary-sector value is about 22.8 billion yuan and comprehensive value about 78 billion yuan, ranking 7th nationally. That an inland province can reach 7th in comprehensive value, amid a field crowded with major tea provinces, rests on a few distinctly characterized production regions.

The first map is the green tea of southern Shaanxi, centered on Hanzhong and Ankang. Hanzhong is the province's largest tea-producing prefecture, with a total tea-garden area of about 1.324 million mu, raw-tea output value of about 10.2 billion yuan, and comprehensive value of about 37 billion yuan; its area, output and value account for roughly 44, 52 and 43 percent of the province's totals, making it nearly half of Shaanxi's green tea. Its regional public brand, Hanzhong Xianhao, has a brand value of about 4.323 billion yuan. Ankang differentiates on selenium content, with a tea-garden area of about 1.12 million mu and comprehensive value of about 33 billion yuan; the Ankang Selenium-Rich Tea brand is valued at about 4.38 billion yuan and has ranked for years among the country's leading regional public tea brands.

The second map is the Fu tea of the Guanzhong region, centered on Jingyang in Xianyang. Fu tea is a dark tea made through a "flowering" fermentation process; historically it was the border-trade tea sold along the Tea-Horse Road to the northwest. In recent years Xianyang has turned this ancient craft into an industry: the city's Fu tea enterprises have grown to more than 60, with annual output of about 30,000 tons and comprehensive value of about 3 billion yuan, and products exported to more than 40 countries. In 2023 Xianyang was also awarded the title "Capital of Fu Tea" by the China Tea Marketing Association. Green tea is about freshness, Fu tea about fermentation and transformation; the two maps follow entirely different process routes, yet together they give Shaanxi's refined tea its depth.

The shared challenge of the tea industry is also plain to see. Brands are many but scattered, enterprises are generally small in scale, and the level of deep processing and standardization is not high. These are the hurdles Shaanxi tea cannot avoid as it reaches for a larger market. Turning the value of regional public brands into the actual profitability of enterprises is the homework for the next stretch of this line.

5. The Upstream That Supplies These Three Lines

Pulling the three lines together, Shaanxi's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing is a jigsaw assembled from several strong production regions: baijiu has Xifeng's Feng-aroma pole, beverages have apple juice concentrate's global export share, and refined tea has the two maps of Fu tea and Han tea. Each is solid in its own right, and each has its own ceiling.

For these three lines, behind the manufacturing link lies an equally real upstream supply chain. Baijiu makers need bottles, caps, cartons and filling lines; juice plants need aseptic bulk-packaging bags, concentration and sterilization equipment, and inspection instruments; tea enterprises need tea packaging, pressing and blending equipment. What these upstream suppliers face is precisely the individual, real factories spread across Fengxiang, Xianyang, Hanzhong, Ankang and the Weibei region.

For upstream sales serving this industry, to reach Shaanxi's liquor, beverage and tea manufacturing customers in volume and with precision, one can use Tianxia Gongchang to filter the factory directory and decision-maker contacts for this track by region and industry, turning customer development from house-by-house inquiry into reading the map.

6. The Institute's View

What is most interesting about this industry in Shaanxi is that its three lines each represent a different manufacturing logic. Xifeng is brand-driven, in the business of culture and aroma type, with the difficulty of leaving its home base. Apple juice concentrate is capacity-driven, in the business of global supply, with the difficulty of added value and bargaining power. Fu tea and Han tea are resource-driven, in the business of production regions and categories, with the difficulty of moving from fragmentation toward scale.

These three lines will not converge into a single story, nor do they need to. A province's liquor, beverage and tea manufacturing does not require one main thread to string everything together. Its true character is the apples of the Weibei plateau, the liquor cellars of Fengxiang and the tea gardens of the Qinba mountains, the local resources that, after being polished again and again by generation upon generation of processing craft, leave behind a few signboards that each stand on their own. Resources are given by nature; whether they can be made into industries, and the industries into brands, depends on the unglamorous accumulation of craft and market development over the decades that follow. This cannot be rushed.

Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (directory and industry data of Shaanxi liquor, beverage and tea manufacturers)
  • Xifeng recorded 10.34 billion yuan in sales revenue in 2023, up 23 percent (Sina Finance, Securities Daily)
  • Xifeng enters the ten-billion-yuan ranks (Sina Finance)
  • Groundbreaking of Xifeng's 100,000-ton premium base-liquor project (Jiuzhan)
  • Juice concentrate giants position around Shaanxi apples (Economic Observer, Sina Finance)
  • Company profile of Shaanxi Hengtong Juice Group (Hengtong Juice official site)
  • A small tea leaf links a big industry in Shaanxi (Cnwest, Hsw.cn)
  • Hanzhong's raw-tea output value exceeds ten billion yuan (People's Daily Shaanxi)
  • Fu tea links the industry into prosperity (Shaanxi Daily, Sina Finance)
  • Ankang's 1.12 million mu of tea gardens enter harvest season (China News Service)