Taipei / TW. (ic / sb) Wei Chuan Foods Corp, a Taiwanese condiments manufacturer and distributor, is planning to form a joint venture with Japan´s Pasco Corp (Shikishima Baking Co) and Itochu Corp, in a bid to tap the bread market of mainland China, according to industry sources. Itochu, Japan´s fourth-biggest trading house, and unlisted Shikishima, Japan´s No. 2 bakery, said in a joint statement that the venture will build a bread factory and begin wholesale operations by February 2010, initially targeting wealthy consumers in Shanghai. That will be a step further than Japan´s top bakery Yamazaki Baking Company, which bakes bread at its retail shops in China. Wei-Chuan Foods is a subsidiary of Chinese food company Ting Hsin International Group, which has Tingyi, China´s dominant instant noodle maker, under its umbrella. Itochu has arranged business ties between Ting Hsin and other Japanese companies including Asahi Breweries Limited and Kagome Company. «We got a request from Ting Hsin International Group to find a Japanese bakery partner with hit products», said Itochu spokeswoman Yuko Takeuchi. She said Ting Hsin, which is also strong in the bottled tea and mineral water businesses in China, considers bread as the country´s next growth area given that the market has grown 30 percent a year to some 100 billion JPY (615 million EUR). The joint venture, Ting Sheng (Cayman Islands) Holding Corporation, aims to sell 20 million loaves of bread and pastries worth 90 million CNY (8,81 million EUR) in its first year. The venture is capitalised at 7,38 million EUR, with Wei-Chuan Foods Holding a 60 percent stake, Shikishima Baking 24 percent and Itochu the remaining 16 percent.
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