A giant industrial park being built in southern China by Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) will house several food-manufacturing facilities, including one focused on “high-tech ecological aquaculture" according to the company.
The Fuling Food Industrial Park is now under construction in Nansha, Guangzhou, China and will be completed in 2023. The facility is being built as part of a joint venture between Louis Dreyfus, the Donlink Group, and the Guangdong Haid Group, an aquafeed firm.
The RMB 7 billion (USD 1.1 billion, EUR 980 million) project aligns with government policy for development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which aims to integrate the region’s economies.
The Fuling project also comprises a feed mill with daily soybean processing capacity of 6,000 metric tons (MT), a vegetable oil refining mill with daily production capacity of 1,200 MT, and a packaged cooking oil production line with daily bottling capacity of 800 MT>
A Louis Dreyfus spokesperson said the firm could not elaborate with more specificity on the aquaculture component of the project. Over the past decade, the company has sought to hedge its grains business by moving into branded consumer goods opportunities in China, with a new oil crushing plant in Tianjin. It has also piled into the Chinese aquaculture sector as part of its strategy to grow its Chinese sales.
Established in 1994, Donlink Holding Group Co (it goes by Dongling in Mandarin) signed a deal in 2020 with shrimp firm Guolian Aquatic to build a 300,000-MT-capacity aquafeed production plant with a specialty in giant grouper and pomfret feed. The project is part of a planned USD 2 billion (EUR 1.9 billion) development of 2,000 offshore cages off the Guangdong coast. Guolian has since announced it is exiting the aquaculture space to focus on processing and marketing.
The Donlinks Group has interests in trading grain, oilseeds, potash, and coal. Guangdong Haid has built shrimp feed plants and farms in Latin America and has a separate agreement with Donlinks for a “high-end,” 300,000-MT aquafeed production plant in Tianjin.
Major Chinese aquafeed producers like Haid, New Hope Liuhe, the Tongwei Group, and Tianbang (Techbank) have recently upped their supply of products catering to producers of premium aquaculture products like crayfish, crab, bass, and grouper.
Photo courtesy of Louis Dreyfus Company
