Andre has sweet success making food additive

YANTAI: Yantai Andre Pectin Group says it has formed a natural eco-friendly production cycle in its joint venture while at the same time becoming the first to make the food additive pectin in China.

With completion of its first-phase, 2,000-ton production line, it has become the largest facility in Asia to make the material that is extracted from plants and widely used as a thickening agent in foods, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

After mastering the advanced technology that has long been controlled by companies in a handful of developed Western countries, Andre has met a task set in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) to support science and technology.

It is so productive that its pectin is now exported, bringing an end to the time when China had to import the additive from abroad for its food and medicine industries.

"Through independent innovation, now we are the sixth company in the world to have independently developed intellectual property rights for these advanced technologies, which once were held by only five corporations in the United States, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland," said Wang An, president of the company. "We now have seven patents." Andre started its first pectin project in 2003 to meet one of the key goals of the 11th Five-Year Plan that was listed due to the sophisticated technology required and the product's widespread use.

Through generous investment, Andre established a research and development team of four foreign experts, three holders of PhDs and eight with master's degrees.

The company also cooperated with China Agricultural University and the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine to innovate and assimilate advanced technology, Wang added.

With an investment of $50 million in December 2006, the first 2,000-ton production line met demands in the domestic market, the company said.

A second $40 million line is now under construction that when finished will make the company one of the four-largest pectin producers in the world.

Its 7,000-ton annual output will account for one-sixth of the world total.

As part of the effort, the company has also built nine juice concentrate processing facilities in the apple growing provinces of Shandong, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Liaoning and Shanxi.

It also has 12 advanced production lines that making 200,000 tons of juice concentrate and 4,000 tons of pectin that have helped at least two million farmers increase their aggregate annual income by more than 1 billion yuan.

The first juice concentrate company from China to go public, it was listed in Hong Kong in April 2003.

Ninety percent of its production is now exported to North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa.

In 2005, the company's apple juice was given the title of famous brand in China. In 2006, Andre Pectin received an award for excellence in management of 2006 from the China Authentication Center.

(China Daily 03/12/2008 page15)