Danish Crown, Denmark, announced plans to invest approximately $43.9 million in a processing and retail product plant situated in Shanghai, China.

“First, much of the [pork] consumption is moving into foodservice or restaurants similar to the USA or Europe. Secondly, we see a vast increase of e-commerce where groceries are bought and delivered at home. This is growing immensely in China and cities such as Shanghai, which likely has the world’s most advanced e-commerce market. The third trend is that consumers in supermarkets have also started buying retail packed products precisely as we know from Denmark,” says Jais Valeur, chief executive officer.

Trends also show that the Chinese have less time at home to cook meals from scratch.

“It is therefore evident that we should try to capitalize on this by our own production. Is this a chance we are taking? Yes, it is, but this is one of the chances we should take as a big company and try to see if we can get closer to the market, closer to consumers and further up in the value chain in China rather than just being a raw material supplier,” says Valeur.