---
title: "Can Three Major Strategies Support the Ambition of the 'Vinegar King'?"
description: "Hengshun Vinegar Industry, China's largest vinegar producer, has unveiled three long-term strategies under new chairman Gao Yinong to transform into 'Hengshun Weiye' and expand beyond vinegar into a full-table condiment provider, while facing challenges from competitors like Haitian and the need for M&A."
author: "让消费更纯粹的"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2025-11-22"
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# Can Three Major Strategies Support the Ambition of the 'Vinegar King'?

> Hengshun Vinegar Industry, China's largest vinegar producer, has unveiled three long-term strategies under new chairman Gao Yinong to transform into 'Hengshun Weiye' and expand beyond vinegar into a full-table condiment provider, while facing challenges from competitors like Haitian and the need for M&A.

**Source** | ZDXC **ID** | ZDXFBA Author | ZDXC
"If Hengshun weren't a state-owned enterprise, and X was there, Haitian might have already surpassed it." When discussing the domestic vinegar industry with an industry insider, he sighed. 
Gao Yinong, source: Bainian Hengshun
Indeed, before Gao Yinong took over as chairman of Jiangsu Hengshun Vinegar Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter "Hengshun Vinegar"), this largest vinegar company in China and the only listed company with vinegar as its main business had seen its performance hover around 2.1 billion yuan for three consecutive years. Meanwhile, Haitian Flavoring, a competitor to all condiment companies, had "sneakily" become the runner-up in the vinegar category.
Perhaps it was a "mission at a critical moment," or perhaps it was the cruelty of the market, but under Gao Yinong's leadership, Hengshun Vinegar directly "showed its cards," holding high three major long-term development strategies to accelerate its transformation into "Hengshun Weiye."
**A Shift in Self-Perception**
Over the past three years (2022 to 2024), Hengshun Vinegar's revenue was 2.139 billion yuan, 2.106 billion yuan, and 2.196 billion yuan, respectively; net profit was 138 million yuan, 87 million yuan, and 127 million yuan. In the first three quarters of this year, these two indicators were 1.628 billion yuan and 142 million yuan.
Looking solely at the market situation in the first three quarters of this year, Hengshun Vinegar's performance is actually quite good. In the first three quarters, Hengshun Vinegar's vinegar revenue reached 1.052 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.82%; the wine series achieved revenue of 238 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 9.71%; the sauce series achieved revenue of 136 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.28%.
If we focus on the vinegar category, among mainstream condiment companies that achieved growth in the first three quarters of this year, perhaps only Hengshun Vinegar and Haitian Flavoring did so.
Despite this, Hengshun Vinegar's understanding of reality is still quite in line with the characteristics of a commercial enterprise. In the latest investor relations activity table disclosed by Hengshun Vinegar, the company frankly stated: As an enterprise that "started with wine and became famous for vinegar," the core balsamic vinegar business remains stable overall, with a slight improvement, but limited growth. Shortcomings: Other categories and new production capacity face significant pressure. New production capacity will exert certain profit pressure on the company in the short term.
Although Hengshun Vinegar is the only listed vinegar company, its self-positioning is also quite clear—nominally a national brand, but in essence, its brand influence is still highly concentrated in East China, especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Shanghai as the core markets, with marginalized brand voice and insufficient terminal visibility. In other provinces and overseas, it also has a certain reputation, but it is far less solid than its home market.
It is worth noting that before Gao Yinong, Hengshun Vinegar had almost never expressed itself in this way.
At the product level, Hengshun Vinegar used to claim that the company would further focus on the condiment main business and accelerate the development of the three core businesses of "vinegar, wine, and sauce." Now it has expanded into a four-sector industrial pattern of vinegar, wine, sauce, and compound condiments, and the strategy has been upgraded to "strengthen the core of the main business, expand the side business categories."
Clearly, Hengshun Vinegar is preparing to "accelerate" towards the direction of Hengshun Weiye.
**Medium- and Long-Term Development Direction**
As a clear sign of Hengshun Vinegar's acceleration, it has already jumped out of the three major categories of "vinegar, wine, and sauce" in terms of product categories.
Image source: Hengshun balsamic vinegar
In Hengshun Vinegar's words, it is the "full-table condiment strategy," which is also the first of the three major strategies formulated by Gao Yinong for Hengshun Vinegar.
Under this strategy, Hengshun Vinegar will shift from "only making vinegar" to "solving a whole dining table": on the basis of consolidating the advantages of balsamic vinegar, it will synergistically strengthen categories such as soy sauce, cooking wine, sesame oil, and white vinegar to create a one-stop seasoning solution.
Moreover, at the market level, Hengshun Vinegar will launch core products with different flavors for different regional markets, and at the same time, by shaping regional or even national big single products (such as core balsamic vinegar and key soy sauce single products), it will drive sales growth of other categories, fully utilize economies of scale to reduce costs, and enhance profitability.
As the second major strategy of Hengshun Vinegar, although it is still based on vinegar, the categories are not limited to the condiment field, but lean towards vinegar drinks and functional products.
As early as the first half of this year, Hengshun Vinegar's R&D expenses increased by 29.71% year-on-year. Gao Yinong revealed in an interview with a media outlet that a large part of the new expenses was invested in "health vinegar nutrition spectrum analysis" and the development of new vinegar food products.
Hengshun Vinegar stated that this strategy will move from "table seasoning" to "daily drinking": planning to focus on developing vinegar drinks and oral vinegar with health benefits and health-care attributes as selling points.
Currently, Hengshun Vinegar's new products such as vinegar beverages, oral vinegar, vinegar coffee, vinegar cola, and apple cider vinegar are already in R&D or trial production.
In addition, the gift market will also become one of Hengshun Vinegar's three major strategies. "Extend Hengshun products from pure condiments to 'decent and practical gifts,' negotiate with cultural tourism IPs, and turn balsamic vinegar into cultural and creative souvenirs."
Of course, ultimately, it must return to the condiment industry. Hengshun Vinegar stated that it will introduce new scenarios such as cultural tourism, catering, and semi-finished dishes, and lay out new business formats such as the catering end and cooking robots, to achieve expansion from the home kitchen to catering and pre-made dish scenarios. "Through large-scale use on the B-end, further consolidate C-end awareness and repurchase."
**How Will the Ambition Be Implemented?**
In fact, Hengshun Vinegar itself is also very clear that the domestic vinegar industry consumption is actually quite differentiated. With the "Four Famous Vinegars" (Zhenjiang balsamic vinegar, Shanxi aged vinegar, Sichuan Baoning vinegar, and Fujian Yongchun vinegar) as a rough division, each region has its own taste habits.
Therefore, the "first stop" for Hengshun Vinegar to accelerate towards Hengshun Weiye is still its home base of Jiangsu. Hengshun Vinegar frankly stated: "Jiangsu's population accounts for about 1/14 of the country, with strong consumption power, and it is the company's most critical base market."
As the first goal of Hengshun Vinegar, it is to "win back" market share in categories such as soy sauce in Jiangsu, and strive to achieve more actual combat in core categories, reducing costs through economies of scale.
Indeed, this goal of Hengshun Vinegar is not easy. In terms of vinegar alone, Haitian Flavoring and Qianhe Flavoring have already "inserted nails" at Hengshun Vinegar's "doorstep" through acquisitions of Danhe Vinegar and Hengkang Vinegar (Jinshansi), respectively. Moreover, East China, including Jiangsu, has always been a battleground for consumer companies, because besides having a large population, there is also money. Focusing on the soy sauce category, the author has not yet seen Hengshun Vinegar's soy sauce products at the terminal level.
Apart from vinegar, Hengshun Vinegar indeed missed the opportunity for diversified expansion, "giving away" the market lead in categories such as soy sauce. Although Hengshun Vinegar now includes wine and sauce in its "core categories," together they contribute less than 30% of revenue, still far from truly "bigger and stronger."
Condiments are different from other foods; consumer perception changes are actually more prolonged. For the vast majority of consumers, "Hengshun" is the representative of vinegar. Although Hengshun Vinegar has launched multiple new products, the market response has not been enthusiastic.
Of course, under Gao Yinong's leadership, Hengshun Vinegar has also begun to agree with the logic that "to become bigger and stronger, one cannot do without M&A."
Hengshun Vinegar stated: "Relying solely on monthly and annual natural growth, it is difficult to achieve leapfrog development. We will look for suitable upstream and downstream targets as potential M&A objects at the right time."


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 让消费更纯粹的
- Published: 2025-11-22
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/can-three-major-strategies-support-the-ambition-of-the-vinegar-king-a42719c5/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NOnvj-BpezI9NdS3BV4QZQ

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