COFCO Tunhe Co., ltd. is principally engaged in food products processing and distribution. The Company provides tomato products, including aseptic tomato paste, tomato powder, tomato juice and tomato natural lycopene, among others; edible sugar products, including white refined sugar and granulated sugar products with brands named Tunhe and Sifang; fruit products, including apricot concentrated pulp and dried apricots, as well as other agricultural and sideline products. The Company distributes its products in domestic and overseas markets. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had 30 subsidiaries and one affiliate, which involved in planting and processing of tomatoes, production and distribution of edible sugar, apricot pulp, dried apricots, seeds and feedstuffs, as well as processing of cement.
COFCO Tunhe Co., Ltd. (Abbreviated as COFCO Tunhe) is a leading producer and supplier of fruit and vegetable products in China. As a subsidiary and one of nine business units of COFCO Ltd. (one of the world’s top 500 enterprises), COFCO Tunhe is a public company (stock code: SH 600737), focusing on agricultural cultivation, processing and trading of tomato products, beet sugar, fruit products, canned foods .
As a leading national agro-crop processing enterprise, COFCO Tunhe is one of the largest tomato processor, one of the largest manufacturers of apricot puree concentrate in the world, and the largest beet sugar manufacturer in China. COFCO Tunhe is dedicated to becoming a leader in Chinese fruit and vegetable industry and the world’s first class food enterprise, offering green and nutritious food and delivering maximum values to the company’s customers, shareholders and employees.
Established in 1983, COFCO Tunhe went public at Shanghai Stock Exchange in 1996. After the successful acquisition of COFCO Ltd. in June of 2005, COFCO Tunhe entered into a rapid and healthy track of sustainable development with an overall upgrading in aspects of business profitability, industrial size and status, customer trust, social reputation and international influence. In 2008, the company successfully entered into the 180 index shares at Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 index shares. The development model of COFCO Tunhe has been made into one of the Harvard Business School Study Case.
In China’s premier tomato growing regions (Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Gansu), COFCO Tunhe has established 23 tomato products processing factories with an annual processing capacity of 550,000 tons aseptic packing tomato paste, 53,000 tons canned tomato products, 3000 tons tomato powder and 10 tons tomato lycopene. The aseptic tomato paste has been exported to the markets of more than 80 countries and regions, such as the United States, Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East. COFCO Tunhe has established a strategic cooperative relationship with many internationally renowned companies such as Heinz, Unilever, Nestle, Kraft, and Kagome. COFCO Tunhe is also the largest domestic producer and exporter of tomato powder product, which is sold well in the markets of the United States, UK, Italy and other countries. "Pomodoro" – the company’s private label tomato lycopene capsule is well known in Chinese functional food markets for its high quality and nutritional value.
COFCO Tunhe has 5 fruit processing factories with and annual capacity of 20,000 tons apricot puree concentrate. In addition to domestic market supply, the products are also exported to Europe and the United States, Japan and South Korea, Central and West Asia, Russia and Arabian countries, accounting for 40% of the international trade volume.
Based on the quality tomato paste, apricot puree concentrate and Local Characteristic resources, COFCO Tunhe has made great efforts to develop tomato ketchup, fruit and vegetable juice, and dried fruit, to promote fruit and vegetable raw materials changed into consume products of domestically well-known brands, to seed up industrial upgrading, and to increase industrial efficiency. The company's private label "Fun" (ketchup series) and "New Sunshine" (fruit and vegetable juice series) are popularized and quickly developed in Chinese markets by their high degrees of professionalism and images of natural health.
COFCO Tunhe also actively participates in the activities of tomato organizations of both home and abroad. In 2007, together with China Canned Food Industry Association (CCFIA) the company issued “White Paper of Chinese Tomato Industry Development”, “the WPTC (World Processing Tomato Council) China Study Tour” was also successfully held in the same year. In 2008, Mr. Qin Yelong, president of the company, was elected vice chairman of WPTC. The status and influence of Chinese tomato industry have hence upgraded and increased within the world tomato industry.
COFCO Tunhe has nine beet sugar manufacturing factories in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Shanxi province, with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons sugar and 160,000 tons beet pellets. "Sifang" brand of white sugar has won a number of awards in China such as "Green food", "Chinese famous brand products” and “Xinjiang local famous brand "etc. and "Tunhe” brand of white sugar has been granted as "National award for product quality "and" Xinjiang local famous brand” etc. The products are mainly supplied to Coca-Cola, Kraft, Mitsubishi, Mengniu, Yili and other well-known customers.
To comply with international food trends, COFCO Tunhe has speeded up its steps to become an enterprise with a complete food industrial chain to further improve its size, profitability and core competitiveness with effective control food safety. The industrial chain covers all stages of the industry from “origination to consumption” including seed research and development, planting, harvesting and delivery, processing and sales, logistics, brand promotion and retail sales. Since 2007, the company has steadily entered into agricultural cultivation and implemented large-scale cultivation and mechanical harvesting in order to break the industrial development bottleneck brought about by decentralized small-scale farmers cultivation pattern. In 2009, the company has achieved more than 200,000 mu (13,333 he) tomato and sugar planting fields for mechanical harvesting. The company’s controlled planting fields for mechanical harvesting is expected to reach 50% in the next few years. The company will also accelerate steps of its brand establishment to make it to be a core business in the whole industrial chain and become a well-known branded food supplier in domestic China.
In the aspect of food safety, COFCO Tunhe is the pioneer in food industry to implement the food safety control system in the whole industrial chain to ensure its product quality and safety from field to table including seed selection, planting, harvesting and delivery, transport, processing and selling. The Company's products have got such certificates as ISO9001: 2000, HACCP, ISO14001, Non-GM Identity Preservation, and China National Accreditation Board for Laboratories certification etc.
COFCO Tunhe adheres to the concepts of corporate citizenship and has made great efforts to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities in aspects of issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers, local economic development and western development drive, bringing prosperity to ethnic minority border areas, agriculture-related industries development, production safety, energy-saving and emission reduction etc.