Mr Viral
Yalexian believes that its greatest advantage lies in the fact that all of its mushrooms are wild-grown, as this greatly enhances the natural factor of its products.
“The fact is that more and more consumers today are looking for healthier products, and tend to correlate healthy items with being natural as well, whereas ‘natural’ is often correlated with being ‘wild’, so we tick all the boxes,” Yalexian Managing Director Ji Changlian told FoodNavigator-Asia at the recent Food Ingredients China (FIC) 2025 event in Shanghai.
“As such, we have been able to actually see our market and sales being quite naturally driven by consumer demand in China, as mushroom-based soups are quite a traditional and common dish here – this can clearly be seen with one of our biggest partners Haidilao presenting a clear mushroom-based soup as one of its most basic soup options.
“We sell mushrooms as a soup ingredient as well as mushroom powders as a flavouring ingredient, both B2B such as with Haidilao and B2C such as with our best-selling ready-to-heat (RTH) Matsutake-Chicken soup which contains a mix of mushrooms including the Matsutake mushroom which is prized for a spicy-aromatic flavour.
“Overall we have found that Matsutake mushrooms, Morel mushrooms, porcini mushrooms and truffles are the most popular variants in our portfolio, with the latter two being especially popular in markets like Europe and the United States.
Despite being aware of the massive potential in these markets, Yalexian has yet to officially start exporting here due to existing challenges such as the need to have a factory that is close enough to ensure high quality is maintained.
“We currently already export to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, and just obtained approval in 2024 to start selling to Australia and New Zealand,” he added.
“There is also a lot of potential here as consumers highly prize natural products and are both willing and able economically to pay extra for that.
“So for the coming few years, we are looking to focus strongly on New Zealand especially as a major target to expand sales.”
In addition to powders and packaged RTH products, the firm also produces a unique Matsutake mushroom paste which can be used to make a wide variety of items.
“Apart from the regular items associated with mushrooms such as dumplings and sauces, this paste can actually also be used as an ingredient to make items like ice creams, cakes and desserts,” he added.
“This is because the mushrooms on their own do have that desirable umami taste but this does not necessarily translate to saltiness unless salt is added during the processing – on its own, it can be used as an ingredient to increase product nutrition and aroma.
“In terms of nutrition, mushrooms are increasingly being recognised for components such as the antioxidant ergothioneine which is quite unique to it, as well as for its anti-cancer properties, [which have been detailed in studies from many countries from Japan to America].”
Universal fungiDespite these potentially huge benefits, fungi in general tend to be associated with food poisoning fears in some markets due to some mushroom species indeed being poisonous, hence Yalexian’s top priority is to achieve all the necessary food safety certifications in order to ensure smooth market expansion.
“We know that mushrooms have all of this great potential, and in order to really unlock it we need to ensure and guarantee the safety of our products to all consumers everywhere, so the first priority is of course food safety,” he said.
“We also intend to build multiple facilities across the globe, not just in China, so food safety is even more essential here – this is the first step, and then we also need to look making our mushroom products more international in order to resonate with more consumers worldwide.
“Moving forward the next area of development will likely be in functional foods, where there is a lot of possibility to look at exploring the beneficial compounds of mushrooms more in-depth.”
