Singaporean Yihai Kerry Group plans to list its China grain and vegoil business in the Hong Kong stock market in early 2010. This signifies an escalating competition in China’s grain processing industry.
Yihai Kerry set up joint-venture grain and vegoil processing companies in cooperation with COFCO in the 1990s and became independent ten years later. The two have become biggest competitors in China’s grain and vegoil market.
Yihai Kerry is an international company, running more than forty grain and vegoil mills in China. Its China business revenue exceeded RMB100 billion in 2008, close to 50% of its global revenue. Its business profit increased rapidly in China in the first quarter of this year.
Yihai Kerry plans to secure a dominating share in China’s flour and rice market with the capital to be raised in the stock market. The current flour and rice market is open to complete competition with more than 9,000 flour enterprises and more than 11,000 rice processing companies. Wudeli Group is the largest flour producer with a daily wheat processing capacity of 9,000 MT and Beidahuang the largest rice producer with a capacity of 600,000 MT a year.
Yihai Kerry’s daily wheat processing capacity is 4,000 MT, not including 7,000 MT capacity under construction. Its daily rice processing capacity is 1,000 MT but is planned to be expanded to more than 3,000 MT in two years.
