Zhongpin Inc., a leading meat and food processing company in the People's Republic of China, today announced it will construct a new slaughtering and processing plant, low-temperature prepared pork plant, logistics centre, and research & development centre in Nong'an county in the Jilin province of China. Zhongpin expects to invest about US$61.5 million in the new facility.

The new plant will be located in China's largest grain-producing county, which is also the country's largest animal husbandry region and one of its premium meat producing counties. About four million hogs are slaughtered for food in Nong'an county each year. This site is adjacent to the main markets that include the cities of Harbin and Changchun, making the location ideal for both the source of hogs and for large markets that consume pork products.

Xianfu Zhu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Zhongpin, said: "This facility will be part of our plan to expand to national market coverage for our safe and high-quality food products. The facility will include all of Zhongpin's modern integrated process engineering and IT systems, plus our state-of-the-art cold-chain logistics and distribution centre, a research and development centre and an employee living area. As with all our other expansions, we expect that the northeast market and our new operations will support the creation of additional value for our shareholders."

The new plant's annual production capacity will be a total of 125,000 tonnes, with 70,000 for chilled pork, 25,000 for frozen pork, and 30,000 for prepared pork products. Zhongpin expects to process about 1.2 million hogs in its new plant each year.

The first phase of construction, which includes the production lines and cold-chain logistics and distribution systems for chilled pork and frozen pork, R&D centre and employee living area, is scheduled to start construction in the third quarter of 2010, with trial pork production starting in the fourth quarter 2011. The second phase of construction, which will include production facilities for prepared pork products, will begin in the second quarter of 2011 and should be completed in the third quarter of 2012.