Foshan is located between 22°38' and 23°34' north latitude. The Tropic of Cancer passes through it, and there are two occasions each year when the sun shines directly overhead.
The excellent lighting conditions here have made it a preferred location for soy sauce production since ancient times. The "Haitian Sauce Production Technique", which was listed as a traditional craft item of intangible cultural heritage in Foshan City in 2007, is a testament to the traditional brewing culture of this land.
From the perspective of modern industrial development, based on the thousand-year-old brewing techniques, Foshan has also formed a large-scale soy sauce industrial cluster. Among them, a well-known leading enterprise in the seasoning industry today - Haitian Flavor Industry - was born.
In January this year, the Haitian Gaoming Factory located in Gaoming District, Foshan, was selected as a "Lighthouse Factory" by the World Economic Forum. This is the only Lighthouse Factory in the global soy sauce brewing industry.
Standing on the Ha Tian Wei Line of Gaoming Factory, Wu Xiaobo raised one of the most frequently asked questions in this year's industry research: "What is the connection between you and artificial intelligence?"
In the past, this issue mainly concerned manufacturing enterprises such as those in the clothing and electrical appliance industries. However, when it was applied to the highly traditional industry of soy sauce production - which relies on natural conditions, emphasizes natural fermentation and sunlight nourishment - it brought about a sense of conflict, yet also contained subtle compatibility.
Haitian, this enterprise that originated from the old sauce factory in Foshan and has been passing down its century-old brewing techniques, how did it manage to break the stereotype of "traditional industries" and become the sole beacon factory in the global soy sauce brewing sector?
What is the symbiotic relationship between artificial intelligence and traditional brewing methods? With this core question in mind, Wu Xiaobo's journey to the sea and the sky became a deep exploration to seek the path for the intelligent transformation of traditional industries.
1. Converting Implicit Experience into Explicit Knowledge
The raw material for making soy sauce is the most common agricultural product - soybeans. So, at the Haitian factory, how many soybeans are consumed in a year?
The unit of the answer is not tons or grams, but "pieces" - 2.5 trillion soybeans. Such a huge quantity is measured in "pieces" because each soybean raw material must undergo extremely meticulous screening.
At Haitian Factory, Wu Xiaobo also served as a "soybean inspector" - he had to pick out which of the three baskets (containing Haitian soybeans, ordinary soybeans and skimmed soybeans) contained Haitian soybeans.
From a distance, the differences between Hai Tian Yellow Beans and ordinary yellow beans are not obvious. But when closely observed, Wu Xiaobo quickly identified the answer.
The yellow beans from Haitian are so neatly arranged that they seem to have been copied and pasted. Compared to ordinary yellow beans, they contain particles of varying sizes and shapes, some being plump while others are shriveled and incomplete.
From the past to the present, Hai Tian soy sauce has always had strict standards for the inspection of soybeans in the raw material process. First of all, Hai Tian follows the traditional brewing method and only selects whole soybeans, insisting on not using cheaper skimmed soybeans, thus ensuring the authentic and rich flavor of the soy sauce.
Secondly, in the past, selecting soybeans relied entirely on the "sharp eyes" of the experienced workers. When the soybeans arrived, the workers would sit in the courtyard or the factory building, picking them one by one. Any瘪粒 (shrunken grains)， incomplete ones， or those with uneven color had to be sorted out. After a whole day of work， their eyes would become sore and their fingers would turn red. Even with such meticulousness， there were still inevitable mistakes. Occasionally， a few bad beans would slip through the net. If this happened， the flavor of the entire vat of soy sauce might be affected.
By the end of the last century, with the advent of mechanized methods, it was possible to sort out soybeans of appropriate sizes using machines such as the soybean spiral classifier. However, the intrinsic quality of the seeds could not be guaranteed.
Today, in Haitian's bean selection workshop, there are no bean selectors, nor are there any old and cumbersome screening machines. Instead, there are intelligent equipment equipped with display screens, various sensors, and control buttons.
The equipment started running, and countless yellow beans fell down in a rush, flowing through the inspection channel. Wang, the digital engineer from Haitian, who was showing Wu Xiaobo around, pointed at the cameras on both sides of the machine and said: "This is the 'AI Bean Face Recognition System'. It can capture the appearance of each bean from all angles. Dented or damaged beans can be sorted and removed immediately."
The screening process is not only precise but also highly efficient. One machine can monitor ten tons of soybeans per hour and can detect over 13,000 soybeans per second.
"After this step, the soybeans will undergo over 203 physical and chemical tests for pesticide residues and heavy metals, and only if all the tests are passed can they be officially accepted for the production of soy sauce."
The screening of soybeans is merely a segment of the process moving from manual operation to intelligent automation. In the factory, there are many such segments.
For example, in the process of making the mash. In traditional methods, people usually use shovels or bamboo trays to hold the mash materials, and then stack the bamboo trays layer by layer on a wooden frame. The fermentation process relies entirely on the natural environment. The temperature and humidity cannot be controlled. When it's hot, the mash materials are prone to spoilage, while when it's cold, good mash cannot be produced. Moreover, it is placed outdoors, and insects and harmful bacteria can easily fall onto the mash materials. Once contaminated, the entire tray of mash must be discarded.
Now, Haitian has developed a 20-meter-diameter tower-shaped fermentation disc. The single-time fermentation capacity can exceed 50 tons. The output of one disc is equivalent to the total fermentation volume of a small soy sauce factory in a whole year. Moreover, the entire fermentation process is fully enclosed and automated, and is monitored and judged in real time by an intelligent system regarding the growth status of the fermentation.
For instance, the sun-drying process. The ancient method of making soy sauce emphasizes exposure to the sun and night dew, as well as exposure in small vats. Nowadays, Hai Tian has maintained this tradition, but at the same time has also made innovations in the form.
Today, the soy sauce of Haitian is no longer dried in the jars but in the "glass houses". Haitian has a 600,000-square-meter sun-drying area, and within this area, there are countless glass drying pools. In the pools, various detection instruments are installed to monitor the drying process of the soy sauce in real time. Only when the soy sauce meets multiple indicators such as color and flavor can the drying process be completed.
It is said that from a single HeTian bean to a bottle of HeTian soy sauce, 119 procedures and 494 inspection checkpoints, as well as 2,000-plus inspection indicators are involved. And every control of each procedure and every judgment of each inspection contain the process of converting from traditional craftsmanship experience to quantitative data.
In Wu Xiaobo's view, this transformation is not merely a simple addition of technologies; rather, it represents an evolution of the industry from "knowing what it is" to "understanding why it is so".
In recent years, in China's food and craft production, there has been a clear development path - "from experience to science". Master craftsmen rely on the sensory experience accumulated over generations to first determine "what is the best flavor", and these answers are not within the indicators of the laboratory, but in the eyes, noses, mouths and hearts of the master craftsmen.
What Hai Tian has done is to systematically "reverse-engineer" and restore this experiential wisdom derived from the fields using AI and data technologies. They have broken down and analyzed the optimal flavor soy sauce, identifying the corresponding microbial community composition, physical and chemical value ranges, and process parameter standards. This has enabled the previously intangible and hard-to-express implicit experience to become "explicit knowledge" that can be scientifically measured and passed down for a long time.
And this transformation, from a business perspective, is also an inevitable response to the current market demands: it requires both the efficiency and stability under large-scale circulation, as well as meeting consumers' expectations for health, standardization and traceability.
II. Breaking Through the Impossible Triangle
In industrial economics, there is a well-known "impossible triangle" in manufacturing: "efficiency, cost, customization".
It reflects a core contradiction between economies of scale and economies of scope – in the traditional production model, the pursuit of efficiency and low costs makes it difficult to meet the requirements of personalized customization, and vice versa. This predicament has also constrained the upgrading and development of the seasoning industry.
However, with the implementation of technologies such as intelligent manufacturing, industrial internet, and artificial intelligence, this "triangle" is beginning to loosen and even be gradually broken.
Haitian has already had two powerful tools - scale and efficiency. Now, AI technology is becoming the key to helping it overcome the challenge of customization.
Wu Xiaobo openly stated during his research that Ha Tian's performance in terms of customization capabilities was one of the biggest gains he made during this trip. This customization capability is reflected in two core dimensions:
First, the production of customized products that meet specific consumer needs. For example, iron-enriched soy sauce.
In response to the widespread iron-deficiency anemia problem that once existed in our country, in 2002, with the support of the National Health Commission and the sponsorship of the Global Nutrition Improvement Alliance, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention launched the iron-fortified soy sauce promotion project. Haidi became one of the first batch of pilot enterprises in the country. Thirty-three years have passed, and the incidence of iron-deficiency anemia in China has significantly decreased. Haidi is still producing iron-fortified soy sauce to this day.
"Because there is still such demand, we are continuing to produce." On this basis, Haitian is also producing "customized series" products for consumers with special needs. For example, they produce gluten-free soy sauce for people with gluten allergies, and create soy sauce rich in selenium and low in salt for consumers with enhanced health awareness.
This kind of specialized products also convey a sense of warmth. Continuing the charitable mission of iron-fortified soy sauce, these special products have been included in the "Little Pink Cap Project" - with pink bottle caps to distinguish them from regular products. For every bottle sold, one dollar is donated for charity.
Secondly, it is the market-oriented customization of services for small-scale entities, which addresses the pain point of the catering industry's difficulty in small-scale customization. The unique charm of Chinese cuisine lies in "a thousand tastes for a thousand people", but this also leads to the demand for seasonings by small-scale catering enterprises and food workshops being characterized by dispersion and diversity. Small-batch, multi-variety orders often cannot be responded to by traditional large-scale production lines. However, at Hai Tian, the efficient response of "3 days for sample production and 15 days for delivery" has become the norm.
"But if we look at it from a different perspective, for small and medium-sized businesses, can you achieve a cost-performance advantage while providing efficient customization?" Wu Xiaobo then raised another new "impossible triangle" question.
Gu Junqiang, the vice president of Haitian Flavor Industry, gave a definite answer. "We can handle orders worth hundreds of thousands of yuan. And in terms of price, it's not expensive compared to the industry standards."
In Gu's view, being able to break through the impossible triangle of efficiency, customization and cost-effectiveness is based on three underlying capabilities.
Fast research and development response, flexible production line design, and the most crucial aspect - the scale effect formed through raw material standardization and process digitization.
For instance, salt is dissolved into a standard solution and precisely transported through pipelines, replacing manual weighing. This not only improves accuracy but also reduces costs. During this process, the AI system coordinates production scheduling and material allocation, enabling small-batch orders to operate efficiently within a large-scale system, forming a "large-scale feedback to individualization" cycle.
In other words, the intelligent system has restructured the production logic, allowing scale to no longer limit flexibility. Instead, it has become the foundation for supporting diversity.
On the spot, Wu Xiaobo made such a statement: "Under the technological iteration of artificial intelligence, large-scale production, personalized customization and reasonable prices could all occur simultaneously. This is a miracle currently taking place in China's manufacturing industry and something that has never happened in the global manufacturing sector before."
III. The Long-Termism of a 400-Year-Old Enterprise
In June this year, during a voyage in the Mediterranean Sea with "the first Chinese woman to sail around the world", Wu Xiaobo couldn't help but remember it over and over again.
During the voyage, Song Kun said, "In navigation, there is no good captain, only the old captain. Surviving is more important than anything else."
This statement was further elaborated by Wu Xiaobo, who extended it to an observation of business survival. In his view, a truly outstanding enterprise must withstand the tests of at least three economic cycles. In China, one cycle typically lasts for 5 to 6 years, and three cycles amount to 15 to 20 years.
From the historical perspective, the predecessor of Hai Tian can be traced back to the Mao Long Sauce Factory in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, which has a history of over 400 years. In 1955, 25 sauce factories in Foshan were merged and reorganized. As "Hai Tian Sauce Factory" was the largest and most well-known among them, the new factory was named after it. In 2014, Hai Tian was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. On June 2025, Hai Tian went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
As of now, the 2025 Worldpanel Consumer Index report shows that Haitian Flavor Industry has reached 754 million consumers and has a penetration rate of 83.9%, making it one of the top ten preferred brands among Chinese consumers, ranking fourth.
So, what exactly is the "moat" that enables Haishan to weather economic cycles? In other words, where lies its long-term core competitiveness?
This issue might be difficult for outsiders to comment on, but those who are directly involved - the employees who have been working for over twenty years, as well as the long-term cooperating suppliers and distributors - have a genuine understanding of it. In their eyes, the long-termism of Haitian Corporation varies in different aspects, but it always revolves around three points:
First, the commitment to traditional craftsmanship. Over the past few decades, Haitian technological innovation has never ceased.
In 1961, Haitian built its first drying pool, marking the beginning of the "pool instead of vat" era. In the 1990s, while many well-known brands were still hesitant, Haitian invested 30 million yuan to introduce foreign production lines, integrating traditional brewing with automation, thus breaking through the limitations of production capacity and geographical location.
However, apart from technological advancements, the core production process of their soy sauce has remained unchanged. It still uses the traditional methods of room-temperature fermentation and natural sun-drying for production, and the flavor has always been consistent.
Second, continuous investment in technology and research. Over the past decade, Haitian's research and development investment has exceeded 5.9 billion yuan, and it has accumulated over 1,000 patents. This investment is reflected in specific facts, such as Haitian, through three generations and a 70-year effort, cultivating the "Haitian fungus", which can more fully decompose the nutrients of raw materials; another example is the investment of more than ten years in building a black-light intelligent water purification workshop, with water quality reaching the standard of direct drinking water, to ensure the flavor experience of "good water can produce good soy sauce".
Moreover, this technological transformation is not limited to "objects". While enterprises and factories are undergoing transformation, Haitian has also provided its own answer to a consistent technological proposition - "Will intelligent transformation replace humans?"
At Hai Tian, over 600 traditional soy sauce brewing artisans have not been eliminated due to digitalization; instead, they have transformed into "smart artisans" - they have learned digital technologies and taken on the role of "experience translators": converting their long-accumulated practical experience into quantifiable digital parameters, and collaborating with engineers to optimize production standards. With the deep involvement of these old artisans, the digital parameters of key processes have expanded from several dozen to several hundred.
Thirdly, the commitment to users and quality. A 20-year-old partner from Henan Province recalled that he had grown from a small-scale agent to a major one. He witnessed firsthand how Haitian products moved from street-side restaurants to chain restaurants and then into the kitchens of thousands of households. In his opinion, Haitian's success today is inseparable from its long-term accumulation in value creation, consumer perception cultivation, and market service system construction.
However, long-term persistence does not mean slowness or conservatism. On the contrary, the long-termism of Haitian demonstrates in practice a highly dialectical "combination of speed and slowness".
Liu Zhiqing, the vice president of Haidian Flavor Industry, explained it this way: The "speed" of Haidian is reflected at the level that users can perceive, such as production line efficiency, product development speed, launch rhythm and demand response. Haidian once customized a stir-fry meat sauce for a restaurant chain. From development to application, it only took two months. In 2021, Haidian innovatively produced a squeezable packaging oyster sauce to meet consumers' need for more convenient use. Because it solved the long-term usage pain points in the market, the sales of this product exceeded 700 million bottles after four years of market launch.
But behind this series of "speed" lies the long-term "slowness" that provides support. The recipe for the customized stir-fried meat sauce was already stored in Haitian's sauce warehouse several years in advance. The development of the squeezed and packed oyster sauce even began five years before its launch. And now this...
