In fact, since the second half of 2009, Xiangmanyuan flour, Arowana rice and Fulinmen rice under COFCO have been bombarded by advertisements from CCTV and many local TV stations. At the same time, local merchants spread goods in an all-round way and started real hand-to-hand combat with swords and guns in the terminal market. At present, the rice processing industry is "small, scattered and low" and lacks core competitiveness and economic strength. Although there are some small brands in various regions, there are no big brands leading the industry. The two enterprises have brought China rice processing industry into a brand-new brand era.
According to the reporter's understanding, in the near future, a new flour processing factory with an annual output of 244,200 tons of flour and 82,500 tons of bran will rise in Yihai Kerry on more than 68,000 square meters of land in Kuanglin Road, Huangcun Town, Daxing District, Beijing. Of course, this is only part of Yihai Kerry's recent capacity expansion plan. After occupying most of the edible oil market in China, Yihai Kerry, an international grain and oil giant, began to penetrate into the rice flour industry on a large scale. Chen Bo, general manager of Yihai Kerry Food Marketing Co., Ltd. told the media here that Yihai Kerry is one of the largest grain and oil enterprises in the world. In the past, its domestic products were mainly edible oil, but now it will be mainly rice and flour. This seems to be a signal, and it is not difficult to see Yihai Kerry's ambition as a foreign capital to China's grain and oil market.
The data shows that the annual consumption of rice in China is about 240 million tons, but the sales volume of small packaging brand rice is less than 2%. COFCO and Yihai Kerry are aiming at this huge blank market. About 20 years ago, Kerry Cereals and Oils brought small package edible oil to China, and together with its successors, Fulinmen and Lu Hua, ended the era of bulk oil consumption. Now, Arowana, the first brand of edible oil, tries to clone its successful experience in the field of rice; In fact, as early as the second half of this year before the centralized listing of Arowana rice, Yihai Kerry had been planning in the rice processing industry for five years.
At present, Yihai Kerry's rice brands include Arowana, Xiang Yan, Xiangmanyuan and Jin Yuanbao. The processing and circulation industries of soybeans, corn and miscellaneous grains are gradually enriched. Yihai Kerry has established contract farming models in Wuchang, Heilongjiang, Panjin, Meihe, Jilin and other places. At present, 290,000 mu of contracted rice farming has been completed, with full link control from breeding, contracted planting, deep processing, brand-name products and comprehensive utilization of by-products.
In the annual financial report of 2008, Wilmar International stated that its business in China was improving its existing structure and capacity by expanding to other crop businesses after gaining the leading position in small package oil and soybean crushing.
Not long ago, some media reported that Hua, commander of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, met with Guo Kongfeng, chairman of Yihai Kerry Investment Co., Ltd. and his party on February 18. Guo Kongfeng said that Yihai Kerry Company and Corps have cooperated in rice deep processing and other projects. In the future, the company will increase its investment in Bingtuan, hoping that the two sides will complement each other and prosper together. In fact, from July to September this year, Guo Kongfeng and others visited Jiamusi, Lianyungang, Chengdu, Zhoukou, Heilongjiang and other places successively, met with local high-level officials, and made a series of strategic arrangements such as investing in setting up factories, which seemed to weave an invisible net in China.
Take off the "hat" of foreign capital at all costs.
Since the end of 1980s, the company of Guo Henian family, the richest man in Malaysia, has made full use of the advantages of raw materials, capital, technology and management to "divide the troops into two ways" to encircle the oil market in China.
On the one hand, Kerry Grain and Oil focused on the refining field and sales links at the back end of the industrial chain, and created a series of small-package edible oil brands such as "Arowana", which led the transformation of China people's edible oil consumption structure in the process and laid a solid market foundation for its integration of upstream and downstream resources.
On the other hand, Yihai Group is established through a joint venture between Fengyi Holdings and ADM Company of the United States, one of the four major international food suppliers, which has advantages in raw materials, and lays out the middle-end crushing links in the industrial chain. In 2002-2003, the soybean roller coaster market led to the almost total annihilation of domestic soybean crushing enterprises, and at the same time, it swept through domestic small and medium-sized oil plants and carried out mergers and acquisitions, making Beneficial Sea Group become the dominant position in the domestic crushing field in a very short time. At the same time, Fengyi Holdings takes advantage of its palm oil raw materials to fully participate in the oil enterprises under COFCO. As a result, the Guo family has almost formed a pattern of "one dominant family" in the middle and lower reaches of China petroleum industry chain.
In fact, during the rapid growth of foreign-funded grain and oil enterprises such as Wilmar International in China, domestic public opinion is constantly worried about the food security problems caused by their monopoly layout in China, and the government has also issued a series of policies to encourage the development of domestic-funded grain and oil enterprises. On September 3, 2008, the National Development and Reform Commission issued "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Soybean Processing Industry", clearly stating that it is necessary to support national soybean processing enterprises, guide domestic processing enterprises to integrate resources through mergers and acquisitions, and cultivate a group of soybean oil processing enterprises (groups) with a processing capacity of more than 2,000 tons/day, integrated production and marketing, and strong competitiveness; However, foreign investment has always been restricted, and foreign mergers and acquisitions of domestic oil processing enterprises are strictly handled in accordance with national laws and regulations on foreign investment and industrial policies for foreign investment.
In the "Notice on Doing a Good Job in Rapeseed Acquisition in 2009" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, it is stipulated for the first time that enterprises can participate in stock market acquisition. According to the regulations, before the market price of rapeseed rises to more than 4.00 yuan per kilogram, the central government will give the entrusted enterprises a one-time subsidy of 0.20 yuan per kilogram, and the cost per ton of crushing enterprises will be less than that of 200 yuan. /kloc-There is not a single foreign-funded enterprise in the list of more than 0/00 subsidized enterprises.
According to the reporter's understanding, in July 2009, Wilmar International began to plan to spin off all its China businesses and list them in Hong Kong, in response to China's domestic policies and public opinion gradually tilting towards domestic grain enterprises and seeking "de-investment". Obviously, if Yihai Kerry is listed in China, it will make the enterprise more "localized", which will be beneficial to the stability of its business in China and reduce the possible policy resistance for further domestic expansion.
Will rice noodles repeat the mistakes of cooking oil?
In today's node of crazy expansion of transnational capital, we should be especially wary of its excessive penetration into the grain field related to the national economy and people's livelihood.
Qinghai experts analyzed that foreign capital entered the soybean (oil) industrial chain and controlled the logistics and sales links. First, it occupied the market share by dumping at low prices, defeated domestic manufacturers, then raised the threshold, and finally raised the product price. At present, many rice and flour processing plants are in a state of loss and can't start work, which provides opportunities for foreign capital to further penetrate the grain field. Due to the strength of foreign capital, the existing small and medium-sized rice flour processing enterprises in China can't resist its impact at all.
On the one hand, Yihai Kerry runs around the main rice producing areas such as Northeast China, Jiangxi and Sichuan, on the other hand, it wrestles with COFCO in terminal sales and other aspects. Yihai Kerry's efforts are to copy the wealth myth of Jinlong fish oil to rice in the shortest time.
People in the industry are worried that the domestic edible oil market is dominated and controlled by international brands such as Arowana. Another food war after soybean is imminent. For the large-scale layout of Yihai Kerry, will China rice noodles repeat the mistakes of edible oil? "If foreign grain merchants expand from cooking oil to flour rice, the impact will be great." Cao Jianhai, director of the Investment and Market Research Office of the Institute of Industrial Economics of China Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out in an interview.
Ma Wenfeng, who was born in the grain field and is now an agricultural consulting analyst at Oriental Iger, told this media that it seems only a matter of time before the whole chain from soybean planting to edible oil terminal market was bloodbath by foreign capital, and the daily consumption grain fields such as rice, flour and meat were burned by war.
However, some experts said that we should follow the laws of the market and compete freely. "The edible oil market was first opened in China. After more than ten years of development, not only foreign brands such as Arowana have been cultivated, but the whole industry is also much more advanced than other grain and oil varieties in marketing, management and processing. China rice flour industry has been under the protection of national policies and lacks free market competition. So far, no big brand has been cultivated. " He pointed out that foreign capital should follow appropriate guiding principles when entering the rice and flour industries. For example, the Anti-Monopoly Law has played a certain warning role in the development of related industries, avoiding the monopoly situation like the edible oil industry.
With the issue of food security becoming a worldwide problem, our government has begun to tilt towards domestic enterprises out of consideration of food security, and will continue to give preferential policy support. Whether domestic enterprises can seize the opportunity and open up the market and take the lead will become the key factor for the ups and downs of the domestic grain and oil market in the future.
Only by being strong can you control your own destiny.
During this period, some brands of edible oil began to increase in price. This has caused some tension in China, where eating habits depend heavily on cooking oil. Some supermarkets snapped up cooking oil, and some officials even knew that someone had carried eight barrels of oil home in one breath.
The panic of ordinary people is the most powerful manifestation of life stress. The rising price of pork, water, electricity and rice, grain and oil are all closely related to people's lives. Once they can't afford it, it means that their lives will be greatly affected. Edible oil companies rushed to raise prices at the end of the year, which objectively aggravated people's panic.
Although the National Development and Reform Commission clarified that the price of edible oil was not controlled by foreign capital and could not be controlled by foreign capital, the price actually rose, and the people really panicked. An agricultural expert once said that the price of edible oil in various agricultural products is the most difficult to predict, because the whole resource is in the hands of a few foreign-funded enterprises, and they can adjust it as they say, and no one can touch it outside. The sharp rise and fall of domestic edible oil prices this year just confirms this point. Regardless of the ups and downs, almost all are foreign brands, and Arowana, which accounts for nearly half of the domestic market, is the initiator. So arowana has been pushed to the forefront recently.
With the continuous expansion of the market scale of Yihai Kerry edible oil business, the development of edible oil business in China market has encountered a "monopoly bottleneck". At present, the market share of arowana edible oil owned by the company is about to reach the ceiling. It is not so much that foreign grain merchants who are deeply involved in the grain industry urgently need to find a product with more space to open up a new battlefield, so rice, which is still in the most primitive stage of the industry, has become their new choice; It is better to say that these powerful foreign capitals have long planned the grain market in China, and China's huge market is their competitive space. The strength of foreign-funded enterprises is their long-term strategic layout and low-key behavior, so it is not a day or two for them to spy on grain markets such as rice and flour.
In fact, there has always been a debate in the industry about whether such foreign capital threatens domestic food security. Arowana stirs up the rice market, which is not only driven by the lack of interests of industry leaders in the domestic rice industry, but also contains the secret that multinational food giants have to transform. On September 17, the World Investment Report 2009 released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development showed that the total amount of foreign investment in global agriculture increased rapidly, and investment from developing countries became the main force of cross-border acquisitions last year. Experts remind that in this node where transnational capital is expanding, we should be especially alert to its excessive penetration into the grain field related to the national economy and people's livelihood.
China is the most populous country in the world, so it consumes a lot of food and agricultural products. Obviously, if the share of multinational enterprises in China's grain market is too large, it will undoubtedly increase the fluctuation of grain prices, thus increasing the difficulty of grain market regulation.
However, the problem should be viewed from many aspects. The situation that foreign-funded enterprises dominate the China market cannot be attributed to "foreign-funded enterprises are too strong", but a big factor is "we are too small". "The law of the jungle" is the law of nature. Therefore, if you don't let others lead you by the nose or control you, you must be strong. Only when you are strong can you control your own destiny.