The Ministry of Public Security cracked a major case of "gutter oil", and the official officially confirmed that "gutter oil" flowed to the table. This incident has once again stung the public’s nerves by the hidden worry of "gutter oil" that has been silent for a long time. After more than a month’s investigation, the reporter of China Business News found that "gutter oil" is flooding in China. First, due to the temptation of profiteering in the whole production and sales chain, the annual net profit is 3 billion yuan, which is equivalent to a central enterprise under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. Second, it is due to the lack of supervision by government departments. "Waste oil" is so rampant, where are the government departments such as industry and commerce, quality inspection, urban management, health and epidemic prevention?
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Famous catering enterprises and universities become "oil sources"
Recently, the Ministry of Public Security cracked a major case of "gutter oil", which once again aroused people’s concern about "gutter oil". Prior to this, the reporter of China Business News conducted a one-month investigation and found out the whole "gutter oil" industrial chain. Under the temptation of high profits, "gutter oil" has formed a huge industry.
The huge profits behind the price difference in 0.2 yuan
"We can’t invoice the oil here. It’s almost 185 yuan a barrel, about 40 pounds, and the good one is 205 yuan a barrel. If the temperature is low, it will crystallize, but the good one will not." At the farmer’s market of Nanliangjia Store, Beiqing Road, Changping District, Beijing, a shop assistant pointed to more than 20 white plastic vats under the porch.
"How can you not invoice? It’s only 4 yuan and 6 pounds. I bought it in the unit canteen. I’m afraid it’s’ gutter oil’. Can you give me a certificate of conformity? "
"yes." The man answered and handed over a copy paper, which was an edible oil inspection report of a company in Tianjin. It was stamped with the official seal of the inspection agency and impressively printed with the acid value below 1 (acid value below 1 is the first-class edible oil standard). "I will give you as much as you want."
Such a scene is staged in the farmers’ market around the city every day, and the edible oil refined from "gutter oil" is rampant. In the farmer’s market near Liangjiadian, Beiqing Road, Beijing, we can see that there are countless small vendors selling "gutter oil" in dozens and hundreds of barrels.
"I have been checked once, but it has been loose in recent months and can be sold again." A store owner described this. Colleagues told reporters not to take pictures, otherwise it will lead to danger, because almost every shop here does such business.
According to people in the market, a barrel of 40 Jin on the surface actually weighs only 37 Jin, so the price of a Jin is 5 yuan money, and a better Jin of 5.5 yuan. The cheapest price of soybean oil in the supermarket is 5.7 yuan, which is 6 cents or even 20 cents cheaper, which is similar to the price of soybean oil.
Previously, some professionals questioned whether the "gutter oil" could be returned to the dining table, on the grounds that it was difficult to remove the rancidity and odor of the "gutter oil" itself by simple means, and if it was deeply processed, the cost would be high. In this regard, Chang Hai, a researcher at caams Institute of Oils and Fats, said that it is not difficult to extract edible oil with "waste oil", and the cost is very low, so a small enterprise can do it. "Some media said that the cost of refining is not more than one ton in 300 yuan. I have not studied it carefully, but it will certainly not be too expensive."
So, is it more likely that a catty of 0.6 yuan oil is cheaper than 0.2? Is it "gutter oil" or soybean oil? Xiang Hai didn’t give a positive answer, but he explained: "Edible oil production is an extremely mature industry, and the competition is fierce. Don’t say that 60 cents a catty is 20 cents cheaper, and oil dealers will break their heads for it. Think about it, a catty is 20 cents cheaper, one ton is 400 yuan, and the oil sellers are tens of tons and hundreds of tons of wholesale. A batch can earn tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan! "
Famous restaurants become "gutter oil" and "upstream"
Since oil from illegal channels is flooding in large quantities, where does all this oil come from? In a restaurant, the reporter interviewed a person who has been digging for "gutter oil" for ten years: "Our favorite restaurants are those that use more oil, such as brand Hunan restaurant and brand Sichuan restaurant, which are the places with the largest amount of gutter oil." While eating, the person pointed to the dish and said with a smile, "I don’t want to order oily dishes when I eat in a restaurant, such as boiled fish, boiled meat, or even Mapo tofu and eggplant braised in oil. How many stores will use oil well?"
Under the introduction of this person, the reporter went to a famous brand restaurant in Beijing to "squat". At 90 o’clock in the evening, a minibus arrived at the restaurant on time, and the oil dealer who got off the bus looked around warily first. After all, the wind is tight now, and those who illegally pay for oil are afraid of an accident.
However, the store obviously had an agreement with him. The oil digger cleaned up the kitchen garbage first, and then took out a long pole from the car with a helmet-like spoon tied to his head. He began to open the manhole cover marked "dirty" and dig out the oil floating on the upper floor in the grease trap of the hotel. About seven or eight minutes later, he finished his work quickly, put the bamboo pole away, carried the oil drum back to the car, and drove to the next working point.
The reporter investigated catering enterprises in Beijing, and found that many catering enterprises, including some famous brands, such as South Beauty, Hunan and Hubei Love, Guo Lin Home Cooking, etc., all gave kitchen waste and "gutter oil" to some unqualified individual collectors for collection. The key point is that although these catering groups are very large, they seldom pay attention to the treatment of "gutter oil" and never sign a unified recycling agreement with recycling enterprises. The recycling of "gutter oil" is decided by each store. In the South Beauty Store in Zhongguancun, Beijing, the Guo Lin Store in the South Road of Beijing Academy of Sciences, and the Xiang ‘eqing Store in the south of Anhua Bridge in Beijing, reporters found that the oil collectors who came to collect oil at night had no legal qualification.
According to the regulations, Beijing should not allow trucks to enter the Fifth Ring Road until 11 pm. "The police don’t care about oil dealers," said an industry source. "There are two reasons. The first is that they can’t pay much, and people have no money; The second is that even if you impound his car, where will you put it? It stinks, and when you put it in the station, your colleagues will scold you! " This person’s words highlight the fact of the "gutter oil" industry-there is a law but there is no way to take it.
Colleges and universities are an important source
Master Yang has been digging for "gutter oil" for many years. When he entered the gate of Peking University, he went straight to the Nongyuan Restaurant. There is a dirty manhole cover at the back of the restaurant. He skillfully buckled the hole in the manhole cover, gently pulled it open and took a look inside.
"Just finished, the oil has already left." He said.
The liquid under the manhole cover has been empty, and disgusting leaves are floating. In many places, Master Yang almost doesn’t need to open the manhole cover. As long as he looks at the manhole cover, he will know if anyone has been here. This is the "sense of smell" that has been cultivated for many years.
"Just a Peking University Agricultural Park, you can get 200 kilograms of hogwash fat every day." Master Yang couldn’t talk about the business of Peking University, but he knew exactly where the important oil source was, and his words showed envy. A person from the catering department of Peking University said that in the normal school season, there are 50,000 people eating here every day, and the consumption of three meals a day is amazing.
"Peking University’s farm garden and spoon garden, these restaurants are all talked about, and they can get 400 kilograms to 500 kilograms of’ ditch oil’ a day." Master Yang said that big restaurants should pay twice a day, and small restaurants can do it once. After one year, a Peking University can make you at least 200,000 yuan, and "Tsinghua is similar".
In Tsinghua, near Peking University, there are 40,000 people dining, and there are 24 canteens in total. Oil diggers know this like the back of their hands. Because if you can package it, you can pay hundreds of barrels of oil a year (more than 100 kilograms of oil per barrel), including vegetable oil (fried oil, about several hundred kilograms) that can be sold at a higher price, which is an absolute considerable income.
"Beijing is a place where colleges and universities are densely populated. Hundreds of thousands of college students, plus hundreds of thousands of students who are studying, have a very large amount of kitchen waste, including gutter oil," said a person in the gutter oil industry. "If gutter oil is to be treated, colleges and universities should definitely be the first to be treated, because colleges and universities have catering centers to operate, and it is generally easier to manage by agreeing on a recycling company."
Master Yang estimated that universities should account for more than 10% of the "gutter oil" market in Beijing. Secondly, there are troops, large institutions in Beijing, large hospitals, etc., and their consumption of catering oil is no less than that of large catering enterprises.
On the surface, there is no need to pay for the recycling of "gutter oil" and kitchen waste in colleges and universities, but in fact, there are hidden rules. As far as the reporter knows, at present, the recycling of "gutter oil" in universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua, People’s Congress and Institute of Technology is carried out by enterprises that have not obtained formal qualifications. According to industry insiders, the entry threshold of some universities, including the most famous universities in China, is around tens of thousands of yuan every year. When interviewed by several universities, none of them gave a positive answer to this question.
This is just Beijing. The resident population in Beijing is only 16 million, and there are more than 30,000 employees engaged in the "gutter oil" industry in China, with an annual net profit of more than 3 billion yuan. This scale index is no less than that of a central enterprise under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
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Camouflage of processing plant
In the case of "gutter oil" uncovered by the Ministry of Public Security, a company named wesen Energy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as wesen) came into public view. Recently, a reporter from China Business News went to the location of this company to investigate and found that the existence of an enterprise that manufactures and sells "gutter oil" like wesen is related to the lack of supervision.
Camouflage of "chemical enterprise"
"For the serious violations of Jinan wesen Energy Co., Ltd., neither the people nor the village cadres in the village know, and we usually have no chance to get close to the company’s factory building. When they came in under the guise of developing biodiesel, they didn’t have to say hello to us at all. We only knew that biodiesel was produced. " Yang Xinggang, Diaoshanpo Village, Pingyin County, Shandong Province, told reporters frankly.
The reporter interviewed several villagers in Diaoshanpo Village. Many villagers said that they didn’t know what this enterprise was doing until the police arrested Liu Liguo, the person in charge of wesen.
Diaoshanpo Town is a chemical town, with five series of leading products, including pesticides, dyes, pharmaceutical intermediates, refractories and catalysts, with an annual output value of more than 200 million yuan. Chemical industry has become a characteristic leading industry and one of the economic pillars of Diaoshanpo Town. Therefore, the emergence of wesen, in the eyes of most people, is just another chemical enterprise in Diaoshanpo Town.
Liu Liguo chose the refinery in the most sparsely populated place in the northwest of Diaoshanpo Village. The site used to belong to the seat of Diaoshanpo town government, and the land and factory buildings are state-owned, and the site of Mei Shuikou Co., Ltd. on the south side of it also belongs to the government land. Its west and north are farmland, and the processing factory in the east is separated by an asphalt road. In Yang Xinggang’s words, this site already belonged to state-owned land in the early 1990s, during which several factories were changed and built here. All taxes were owned by Pingyin Local Taxation Bureau, and it did not involve occupying villagers’ cultivated land, so it was naturally difficult to attract villagers’ attention.
Although the factory is located in Diaoshanpo, it has nothing to do with Diaoshanpo. Because the factory is heavily guarded at ordinary times, there are barbed wire and cameras around the factory, and villagers are generally afraid to get close.
In order to keep secret, most of the employees employed by the refinery are foreigners. The factory has also made strict regulations on the employees in the factory. All employees must be approved by the company leaders before entering the factory. The employees of the company are forbidden to bring outsiders, including family members, into the factory and talk to strangers, otherwise they will be fined.
According to a villager, one of his relatives worked in it for more than two months, and the salary offered by Green Company to employees was as high as 3,000 yuan, which is a "high salary" in the local area where agricultural income is the mainstay. However, the employee only worked in it for more than two months and really put up with the smell inside and quit.
Regulatory vacuum
The reporter learned from the information obtained by Pingyin Branch of Jinan Administration for Industry and Commerce that wesen Energy Company was established on June 7, 2010 with a registered capital of 1 million yuan, and its business scope covers the production and sales of biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester), oleic acid, stearic acid and fatty acid.
Wesen has existed in the name of biodiesel for more than a year, and no government supervision department has supervised it. In this regard, the reporter interviewed the local industrial and commercial bureau and the Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision.
"wesen Energy Co., Ltd. turned to produce edible oil in the name of producing biodiesel, which is a kind of fraud. Our Administration for Industry and Commerce can only be responsible for the management of commodity quality and food safety in the circulation field and circulation links within its jurisdiction. " Zhang Yuhe, deputy director of Pingyin Industrial and Commercial Branch, explained this.
Zhang Jianhua, deputy director of Pingyin Branch of Jinan Municipal Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision, explained, "According to the Product Quality Law, the responsibility of the Quality Inspection Bureau is to carry out sampling supervision and inspection on certification products. Biodiesel is not a mandatory management product, so it is not included in the inspection. "
Under the regulatory vacuum, wesen "sells dog meat by hanging sheep’s head". It is understood that wesen buys "gutter oil" from Huang Qiang, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Guizhou and other places at a price of about 5,600 yuan per ton, and then processes it into edible oil and sells it at a price of about 8,300 yuan per ton. In the jargon of waste cooking oil processing, the waste cooking oil stored in the yard is called crude oil. If this oil is to be made into edible oil, it must go through at least three processes of hydrolysis, distillation and splitting, and finally the remaining oil is called red oil, which finally flows into the market. The amount of "red oil" produced by "gutter oil" is amazing. It is understood that wesen’s output reaches dozens of tons per day.
Yang Feng, a long-term owner of grain and oil sales in Diaoshanpo Village, told reporters that in fact, if these oils are used as edible oil, they are particularly easy to distinguish. You can know which is "gutter oil" and which is normal edible oil by smelling it. Under normal channels, the relevant departments can know the sales target of oil as long as they regularly check the sales invoices of "waste oil" processing enterprises.
The reporter’s investigation found that many local people did not believe that Liu Liguo, who was arrested, was the mastermind of the deep processing of "gutter oil". According to the announcement issued by wesen on June 28th, 2010, Jinan wesen Energy Co., Ltd. has an annual output of 40,000 tons of biodiesel, 10,000 tons of oleic acid and 10,000 tons of stearin. According to the announcement, the person in charge of the company is Zhong Chonggen, who has never appeared since the incident.
In addition, the corporate name of Green Company found by the reporter on industrial and commercial registration information is Yu Qingpeng, and this person has never appeared, and the reporter has not got in touch with him through various means.
According to the EIA of Shandong Academy of Sciences, the total investment of wesen project is 45 million yuan, and the annual profit after the project is completed is 15,748,400 yuan. But in fact, this enterprise has turned into a "gutter oil" factory. It is still a mystery how this transformation can be concealed.
place/territory under sb’s control
Division of forces of "gutter oil"
"Waste oil", a seemingly disdainful occupation, contains huge wealth.
"You don’t know this industry. There are many people who have made a fortune in this industry." Master Yang, who has been digging for "gutter oil" for many years, fiddled with the Apple iPhone4 mobile phone that he had bought for several months, giving an example of his family history. One started this business in the early 1990s, and now he has money. He bought several houses in Yizhuang, Beijing, and his son did nothing, so he went to take drugs and was arrested. The boss bought 50 acres of land in Beijing and even built a school at his own expense. Another boss, who started this business in 1991 and 1992, also made money. Now he has successfully extended his model to other places, and is building chains in other provinces to establish his own "gutter oil" kingdom. Not long ago, the boss built a new factory in Tianjin.
According to the reporter’s information, the "gutter oil" market in Beijing has been divided up by various forces from other places and divided into gangs. These gangs have their own relatively solid sites, especially in the outer suburbs of Beijing. For example, in Daxing District of Beijing, there are Yuan family, Ma brothers and Dou family from Anhui. In Mentougou, it is run by Cheng and Xu from Jiangsu, and in Fengtai District, it is run by Zhou, Shen and Wang from Jiangsu. In Chaoyang district, it is Tang’s, and in Fangshan, it is Cai’s.
"The oil and water in Beijing’s gutter oil industry was no secret around 2000." Master Wei, a practitioner of "waste oil" in Haidian District, introduced that in 1997, Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau set up Beijing Environment and Development Company, saying that it was an enterprise of Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, but it was actually contracted by a private boss. Relying on the background of the Environmental Protection Bureau, this enterprise has collected more than 200 people engaged in the "waste oil" business in Beijing, and established two centralized waste oil treatment stations in Chaoyang and Fengtai. The two treatment stations take the central axis road of Chang ‘an Street in Beijing as the dividing line, with Chaoyang responsible for the west of the central axis road and Fengtai responsible for the east of the central axis road. "Every year, the East and the West each pay 600,000 yuan to the Environmental Protection Bureau, and the boss makes a net profit of nearly 8 million yuan, which was really not a small sum at that time." A person familiar with the matter said.
It was not until around 2003 that the company was dissolved by the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau because of the conflict between the boss of Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau and Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. It is reported that for this reason, the private boss started a lawsuit with the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, which ended unexpectedly in the failure of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. Beijing’s "gutter oil" market is in a dogfight again, while Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau is forced to withdraw from the "gutter oil" supervision market.
"However, for illegal operators, this does not mean that the profit in this market has decreased." An industry insider said. Lang Xianping, an economist, calculated that the price of edible oil in the market is 6000 yuan per ton, and the cost of "gutter oil" is probably 300 yuan, and the total profit of the whole "gutter oil" industry can reach 1.5 billion yuan to 2 billion yuan a year.
According to the estimation of Beijing Municipal Appearance Management Committee, the current authority in charge of "gutter oil" in Beijing, the total amount of "gutter oil" to be treated in Beijing market is more than 25,000 tons every year. According to Lang Xianping, if the profit range of one ton of "gutter oil" is at least 5,000 yuan, the total profit of 25,000 tons will be more than 125 million yuan.
(China News Network Liu Teng Sean)
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