The Chinese firm American Oriental Bioengineering is to construct a soybean technology centre, which it claims will produce around 15 per cent of China's total soybean and soy product output.
The 5 million square foot facility, to be located in the HeiLongJiang Province, where one third of China's soybeans are produced, will also include 1 million acres of land for soybean cultivation purposes.
AOBO said the new centre is targeted to produce an additional 2 million tons of soybeans and soybean protein peptide related products each year for the company. The company says its proprietary process for production of soybean protein peptide is more efficient than traditional extracting techniques.
The Hong Kong-headquartered firm will sell soybeans as a raw material worldwide and will also use refined soybeans to produce its own high volume, high value proprietary products, such as soybean protein peptide, through value-added processing and extractions. It will also perform research on improving the soybean species.
Shujun Liu, chief executive officer of American Oriental Bioengineering, said: "Our plan is to get the new facility online as fast as possible in order to significantly expand our production capacity to meet the growing demand for nutraceuticals worldwide."
AOBO has been stepping up distribution of its soy products in international markets. An agreement with UK-based health food distributor Jem Technical Support Services in February extended its presence in the UK and is likely to help entry into other European markets.
In May AOBO signed JAS & Associates, a healthcare marketing company in Hong Kong, for the launch of its functional health drinks and soybean protein peptide in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South China cities. It also entered the Japanese market earlier this year.
The company has forecast record revenue and income growth for the nine month period to end of September. For the first six months of the year, revenue rose 96 per cent to $9.3 million and net income in the first half climbed 303 per cent to $2.5 million.