American food processing company Lamb Weston has been expanding its business for a decade now in north China's Ulanqab City of Inner Mongolia by taking advantage of high yield of fresh potatoes by local farmers and favorable business policies by local government.
Known as the "potato city" in China, Ulanqab has built a 250-kilometer-long potato industry belt, producing over 3 million tons of potatoes annually.
As a U.S.-headquartered leader in producing and processing frozen French fries, Lamb Weston first came to Ulanqab in 2014 and has been continuously investing since then.
"Lamb Weston now boasts over 10,000 employees and operates over 30 factories worldwide. We sell nearly 100 million servings of French fries every day. We have been active in China for nearly 30 years. From the initial trading to the acquisition of our first factory in Shangdu County, Ulanqab in 2014, we have made continuous capital investments," said Zhang Chen, general manager for China at Lamb Weston.
After a decade of development, Lamb Weston's second factory in Ulanqab went into production last year. As the company's first wholly-owned overseas facility, it fully incorporated the new technologies in design, process, energy saving and efficiency improvement within its international framework.
Local government has also continuously optimized policies to further develop the industrial chain of potato breeding, planting, and processing, fostering industrial clusters while optimizing supporting facilities.
"The China market is the number one growing market for us, and we have done a lot great work in expanding both our international sales as well as our regional sales," said Mark Lehman, Senior Vice President of Lamb Weston.
American company continues expansion in northern China
