January 11, 2008

Tangrenshen and Whiteshire Hamroc sets up pig genetics farm in China

On Wednesday (Jan 9), China's Tangrenshen Group signed a swine genetics joint-venture agreement with Whiteshire Hamroc, an Indiana, US-based swine foundation genetics company.

Under the agreement, Hunan province-based Tangrenshen and Whiteshire Hamroc will invest RMB120 million in a grandparent stock pig breeding farm in Zhuzhou district, Hunan province.

In the first phase, the US company will supply 500 hundred heads of grandparent stock sows. Products from the cross-breeding programme will be supplied to commercial farms in Hunan and some will be sold to US farms.

According to Luo Yunquan, an animal science expert at Hunan's Animal Husbandry Department, Hunan's foreign cross-breed lean hogs (cross breed of Yorkshire, Landrace and Duroc) could be bred with Pietrain swine to produce offsprings with superior quality and performance.

The joint-venture with Whiteshire Hamroc is part of Tangrenshen's strategy to increase its annual hog sales to the ten-million-head mark within the next five years.

Tangrenshen's project had been listed by the National Development and Reform Commission and Hunan's provincial government as a key project for 2008.

RMB1=US$0.1375 (Jan 11)