Across China: Inner Mongolia

Mengniu polishes image

Liquid milk producer China Mengniu Dairy will invest more this year to expand its raw milk bases in the country. "Mengniu plans to spend a lot to acquire shares in existing pastures or build up its own pastures," Executive Director and Vice-President Yang Wenjun told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of the eighth Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference in Hainan province. The company aims to increase the number of its mega-size pastures, each of which can hold 4,000 to 10,000 cows, to 20 over the next three years. It currently has seven such pastures in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Shandong, Heilongjiang and Anhui provinces. More mega-self controlled pastures will mean more milk production;

self-controlled pastures produce two-thirds of the company's total milk supply. The tainted milk scandal that surfaced in September last year affected most of the milk producers in the country. The scandal bankrupted Hebei's Sanlu and tarnished the image of Mengniu Dairy Group and Yili Industrial Group, both based in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Consequently Mengniu posted a net loss of 948.6 million yuan in 2008.

(China Daily 04/27/2009 page5)