Companies in China, whose tainted milk powder scandal in 2008 left six dead and more than 300,000 sick, are vaunting tie-ups with French dairies to shore up their image, but some fear this could backfire for Paris.
Chinese firm Biostime (合生元) flaunts its tie-ups with two companies in France, Europe’s
second-largest milk producer after Germany, and one in Denmark, as proof that its products are safe.
Biostime, based in Guangzhou and listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, has joint ventures with France’s Laiterie de Montaigu and the Isigny Saint-Mere cooperative, as well as Danish group Arla.
The agreement with Isigny is the most ambitious, with Biostime investing 20 million euros (US$26 million) to set up a new production unit in Normandy that will more than double baby milk production. The project will cost 50 million euros in total and in return, Isigny will reserve two-thirds of its production for China and offer one place for Biostime on its 15-member board.
Valerie Mariaud, Isigny’s marketing head for baby milk, said the cooperative was pleased.
“In choosing Biostime, which stresses on the origin of its milk, we are not afraid that it will develop the product in China,” Mariaud said.
A Western diplomatic source in Beijing said the tie-ups with foreign firms in New Zealand and Europe were prompted by fears of a baby milk shortage locally.
Chinese companies were trying to “overcome their notoriety internationally” by acquiring brands and technology, not only in milk products, but also in pork items and soya beans, the source said.
The quest for baby milk is urgent for the Chinese. UN child agency UNICEF says only 28 percent of Chinese mothers breastfeed for the first six months — a figure which drops to 16 percent in urban areas. The global average is about 40 percent.
Many other French firms have been approached by Chinese
companies. However, France’s Lactalis, the world’s top dairy firm behind the Lactel milk and President cheese, said it was not interested.
“We basically want to sell under our own brand names [in China],” group spokesman Michel Nalet said.
French firm Sodiaal, which owns the well-known Yoplait and Entremont brands, has adopted a double strategy by launching its Candia products in China and tying up in France with Synutra, China’s fourth-largest maker of baby milk.
Yet some voice fears that Chinese firms could abandon France if they found cheaper options.
“I really don’t see the Chinese buying milk powder at 320 euros per tonne if the price in the world markets is lower,” said Eric Duverger, a dairy farmer who supplies to Sodiaal.
Duverger also said a 10-year partnership between the firms could also lead dairy farmers “to increase production to supply the Chinese,” but if they “leave at the end of 10 years, what will happen?”
Francois Souty, a university professor and a competition laws expert, warned that such ventures could carry a huge risk.
“If we sell French milk under a Chinese brand what could hang over us is a sanitary problem with all the repercussions it could have in terms of image,” he said. “Who will control the process once the milk powder is in China?”
Last month, China fined six manufacturers of baby formula more than US$100 million for price-fixing, among them New Zealand’s Fonterra — the world’s biggest dairy company and the subject of a recent botulism health scare.
Yet French Junior Food Minister Guillaume Garot dismissed suggestions that Chinese investment held much risk.
“On what grounds should we turn down investments, which enhance the French reputation for quality and creates jobs,” Garot said. “We have to beef up our commercial efforts and reinforce industrial partnerships.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts