China Marine Food concludes groundbreaking ceremony for new cold storage facility

China Marine, a manufacturer of seafood-based snack foods, marine algae-based soft drinks and distributor of fresh and frozen marine catch, has concluded a ceremonial groundbreaking for its new cold storage facility on April 17.

The new cold storage facility will have a capacity of approximately 20,000 tonnes. The land on which the facility will be built is 8,691 square metres and located in the Shishi fishing port and is adjacent to the company's processing facilities. The location of the new facility takes advantage of the port of Shishi where the company obtains fresh seafood catch which it processes into seafood products. The fishing port in Shishi is one of the five largest fishing ports in the PRC.

China Marine intends to finance the construction costs for the facility from funds generated by operations, and expects to complete construction and begin use of the new facility in the first half of 2011. Based on the company's existing in-house cold storage capacity of 2,000 tonnes, China Marine currently rents cold storage space at other locations to meet its cold storage demand for the company's 20,000-tonne processing facility. The new storage facility will provide ample storage for China Marine's internal needs and supply the fishing port with needed storage in the port itself. When fully operational, China Marine expects the cold storage facility to produce US$8.0 million in annual storage, blast freezing and ice revenues and contribute US$4.0 million in net income at about 50% net income margins. Due to the importance to China Marine and the local economy, over 200 people attended the event, including the Mayor of Shishi, government officials and the company's distributors.

"We are very pleased to announce the ceremonial groundbreaking for our new facility," said Pengfei Liu, chairman and CEO of China Marine. "Our new cold storage facility will provide high standard modernised cold storage, freezing and ice making services to the port area in which it is located. China Marine will utilise some of the facility's cold storage for itself to help reduce its storage costs. The new facility will also allow us to make bulk purchases of raw materials at favourable prices. Overall, we expect the new facility to help us improve our processed seafood and marine catch margins and also provide a facility to meet increased cold storage demand for Shishi's growing fishing industry."