A busy day for the Board visiting flour and malt
producers in the amazing industrial zone in Southern China's Guangdong region. A
real feeling of development and growth and in the case of the food producers we
met, a push to meet the need for protein as part of the changing appetites of
China's huge and emerging middle class.
We met with Sinograin a regional Government owned importer of grains, situated on the Pearl River. Sinograin's historical business has been as
a storage facility to provide food security to the Guangdong region but it has
changed it's focus to logistics and distribution. It currently has storage capacity
of 500,000 tonnes and has plans for expansion to 1 million tonnes over the next three years.
We met with Wilmar, a Singapore listed food
producer operating in 50 countries. In China Wilmar operates 200 plants in 51
locations. They stressed the importance of large multi plant sites as a means
of minimising overhead costs such as energy and administration.
Our final visit for the day was with Supertime
Development Ltd the worlds 6th largest maltster with nine plants in China. The
company is owned by Guanding Provincial Government but based in Hong Kong.
Supertime were the first commercialised Government owned company in China. The CBH Directors did a tour of the plant which included the top of one of the malting
towers and an incredible view of the port and surrounding industrial zone. We
had dinner with key Supertime executives which was an excellent way to discuss
the industry and ask many questions from the day.
In all these visits the Directors were able to get an
intimate knowledge of the attributes of WA wheat varieties and how these are
valued in the production.
No comments:
Post a Comment