Source:   Amber Gibson, MEATINGPLACE, 6/22/11

Mitsubishi announced a $1.5 billion farming and processing joint venture with China state-run food firm Cofco Wednesday.
The project will focus on chicken and hog slaughter and further processing plants, aiming for $2.7 billion in sales by 2017.
The companies plan to open seven new slaughter plants, boosting poultry slaughter capacity to 300 million a year from 50 millions, hog slaughter to 5 million annually from just 500,000.

It will also open seven new further processing plants, which will increase combined production capacity to 210,000 metric tons from 20,000.

Mitsubishi and its affiliates, Itoham Foods and Yonekyu, plan to own a third of a holding company for Cofco’s meat business by July. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Stocks for all three companies rose Wednesday after this announcement.

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