The Australian merchant John Khalil plants flowers in Shuanghe Township, Jinning County, Yunnan Province. Like his Chinese peers and colleagues, he hopes to plant more and better flowers to sell all over the world.

John Khalil firmly believes that he can achieve his colourful flower dream in Jinning, although his wife thought her husband was crazy at the beginning. To his wife’s frustration, John Khalil, executive director of Lynch Group, the largest flower grower and wholesaler in Australia and the southern hemisphere, came to Yunnan and opened a flower farm in the small mountain village.

John Khalil has good business acumen for the flower industry, and did not choose Jinning without good reason. Today, Yunnan’s fresh cut flowers make up about 75 percent of the total domestic market. At Kunming’s Dounan Flower Market, 70 percent of fresh cut flowers are produced in Jinning, which claims the title of “first among all Chinese towns in flowers.”

In 2007, Lynch Group set up a flower procuring and processing centre in Jincheng, which exported 10,000 to 20,000 plants to Australia each week. In 2014, the centre was upgraded and became a fresh cut flower production base. It now exports between 200,000 to 300,000 plants to Australia on a weekly basis. Today, this supply still falls behind Australian.

Lynch Group attaches great importance to the Chinese market. John said that China holds and will maintain an important position in his company’s development strategy. This is because, he says, “the favourable climate here is suitable for planting flowers; the local market promises great opportunities; and the government is ready to support agricultural development and foreign business people.”

 “With the help of intelligent local people, our flower production base will certainly become a world-class one. Our group enjoys a high worldwide reputation, but it is not yet known to many Chinese people. We hope to turn it into a well-known flower production base in China,” John said. (People’s Daily Overseas Edition)