OSI Group will celebrate the grand opening of its ninth and tenth processing plants in China on October 19. The new plants include a multi-protein further processing facility and an adjacent, integrated poultry operation in Xihua, Henan.
The further processing plant will process poultry and beef products for customers in China and select export markets. Designed to become OSI's largest food processing facility globally, the two-phase further processing facility will measure more than 2.2 million square feet when fully completed in 2018. The first phase of the further processing plant will process par-fried and fully cooked chicken products and employ nearly 500 workers. Phase 2, which will be operational by 2016, will include additional high speed lines and expand the plant's product capabilities to value-added beef.
The DaOSI slaughter plant, which is a joint venture between OSI and leading Chinese poultry company Doyoo Group, will be OSI's largest integrated poultry operation globally, spanning nearly 400,000 square feet.
The overall investment in these operations exceeds $300 million.
The opening of the Henan operation marks OSI's third fully vertically integrated poultry operation in China. With this addition in central China, OSI will be on track to process 300 million birds per year.
"In total, OSI Henan will become the largest further processing facility for value-added meat in all of Asia," said Brent Afman, senior vice president and managing director for OSI's Asia Pacific region. "OSI Henan will have the capability to support our valued customers' growth plans for years to come."
David McDonald, president and chief operating officer of OSI, agreed. "We have invested a great deal in China and are quite appreciative of the growth here," he said. "There is no other place in the world growing as quickly as China, and we feel fortunate to be a part of it. We look at China as the number one growth effort among all of our global activities."
OSI has been operating in China since opening its first factory in Beijing in 1992. OSI also has facilities in India, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia, and expects to employ nearly 8,000 people throughout the Asia Pacific region by the end of 2013.
