KFC's supplier Husi settles poultry base in Shandong

KFC's worldwide supplier, the US Husi Group, will base its Asian chicken supplying base in Shandong's Rushan city.

Husi Group and Rushan Hualong Animal Husbandry Development Company co-invested US$75 million on the chicken  base which is both a slaughter plant and a feed-processing plant. The two plants have an annual processing capacity of 35 million chickens and 300,000 tonnes of chicken meat respectively. The slaughter plant will start running in April this year.

Husi and Rushan Hualong will build a hatchery and chicken breeds plant with an annual output of 30 million chickens for both at the base. Rushan city also planned to build 50 standard chicken farms which can produce one million chickens per year. Among them, two of the farms have started construction and 10 of them are seeking appropriate locations.

The city plans to take production capacity to 50 million chickens by 2012 and up to RMB2 billion (US$293 million) of annual output value by 2020, bringing in over RMB100 million (US$15 million) of additional profit. The base in Rushan is a pioneer in combining product quality control with modern farm management. It adopts a "company-plus-farm" model in which Husi will supply standardised chicken farming techniques, feeds, vaccination, slaughtering and pricing.