News

September 04, 2008

Agfeed Industries Carves Out A Clear Lead In Chinese Pork Markets

By Charles Wyatt

Pork tends to be the favourite meat in various regions of China and some of the most sought after Chinese dishes in both the East and the West world are made of pork. Such dishes, for instance, as sweet and sour pork, pork meat balls, and pork chop suey come to mind. If you eat pork in China the chances will be that a Nasdaq listed Chinese company called Agfeed Industries bred the pigs, fed the pigs and slaughtered the pigs. That is quite a claim as China slaughters 600 million pigs each year compared with 100 million in the States, and that means that China accounts for more than 50 per cent of the world's annual pig production as well as being the world's largest and most profitable pork consumer market.

More than 1.2 billion Chinese consume pork as their primary source of meat and it is estimated that 65 per cent of all meat consumed in China is pork. In fact Chinese consumers consume more pork each year than the rest of the world combined. Agfeed has shrewdly positioned itself geographically in China as most of its pigs are in the wealthiest regions such as Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian and Hainan. This ensures the best prices as these provinces contain huge urban populations...