Food giant CJ hopes to hit gold trail with animal feed

By Jung Sung-ki

CJ CheilJedang, Korea’s largest food manufacturer, opened a state-of-the-art research farm on feed for livestock Tuesday, the first of its kind in the country, in bids to improve the quality of fodder and expand its market share in the global feed market.

An opening ceremony for the CJ Research Farm was held in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province with the attendance of the company’s CEO Kim Chul-ha and other high-profile guests.

“We expect CJ Research Farm will play a pivotal role in developing the research and development (R&D) infrastructure of animal feeds and creating relevant core technologies in the future,” Kim said in a speech. “Furthermore, we’ll develop this research farm into an Asian Mecca of experiments on animals and fodder.”

The company spent 7 billion won ($6.2 million) over the last two years to complete the farm, Chae Min-soo at CJ’s public relations office, said.

The farm will be used in developing new, environmental-friendly fodder by eliminating pollutants from animal excrement and reducing methane gas, according to Chae.

On the farm, researchers will conduct a variety of scientific experiments on feed for cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs, he said.

“The CJ Research Farm is the first of its kind in Korea, dealing with almost all livestock experiments, and there are few of this kind in the world,” said Chae.

“The research center will serve as a venue not only for developing new animal feed technologies but also setting up global standards for fodder to achieve a dominant position in the global market amid growing demand for feed ingredients.”

In an effort to help improve its feed technology, CJ signed an agreement for technology cooperation last year with globally-renowned Schothorst Feed Research (SFR), based in Lelystad of the Netherlands.

The Dutch center is an independent private company responsible for the research and development of feed evaluation systems, raw material evaluation for various animal species and the effect of feed technology on nutrient utilization. Taking into account the growing environmental demands placed on agriculture, SFR also looks at the effect of feed on the environment and the output of nitrogen, phosphorous and methane.

CJ has three feed production facilities here and 17 overseas, including China, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. The company earned 2 trillion won in overseas sales of animal feeds.

CJ has also put an emphasis on the production and development of animal feed additives, with the global animal feed market growing because of the globally increasing demand for meat and meat products.

Additives are becoming an important part of feed for animal growth and nutrition. Disease outbreaks such as avian flu and foot-and-mouth diseases have also increased concern over animal health across the world.

The United States and Europe are the largest markets for animal feed additives and Asia, especially China, is emerging as a high growth market.

Recently, CJ proposed to build a $323 million plant in Iowa, the U.S., where amino acids for animal feed will be made.

CJ intends to build a plant by 2013 for the production of lysine by fermentation technology, CJ officials said. The company said in a statement that the output from the plant with a production capacity of 100,000 tons a year will be sold in the U.S.