Thai agro-industry giant goes ahead with Sichuan investments

Jul 2, 2008, 3:34 GMT

Bangkok - Thailand's agro-industry giant Charoen Pokphand will proceed with a three-year investment plan for south-west China, including earthquake-hit Sichuan province, media reports said Wednesday.

Charoen Pokphand, Thailand's leading agro-industrial conglomerate that has invested heavily in China since the early 1980s, is studying expansions into chicken slaughterhouses and two new feed-meal plants in Sichuan, and has other expansion plans for Hunan, Hubei, and Chongqing provinces.

The Thai corporation, known as the Chia Tai Group in China, has yet to set an estimate for its investment projects in south-west China.

Chia Tai already ran feed-meal plants and chicken farms in Sichuan before the 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the province killing an estimated 70,000 people.

Chia Tai's Sichuan offices and farms suffered only minor damage from the quake that claimed 69,000 of its chickens.

Chia Tai vice chairman Damrongdej Chalongphuntarat told a press conference in Bangkok Tuesday that the earthquake would raise investment costs in Sichuan, meaning that smaller-scale farmers would be pushed out of the livestock sector in the future.

Under new post-quake regulations new buildings are required to be able to withstand 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude quakes, raising construction costs considerably.

'The improvement will stamp out small-scale farms in the future, giving way to medium-sized ones housing at least 1,500 pigs or 10,000 chickens,' Damrongdej told the Bangkok Post.