CJ Cheil Jedang Corp. said Sunday that its newly built Chinese plant in Shenyang that processes amino acid, an essential ingredient for animal feed, will start work this month.

Costing about $400 million, the Korean company’s Chinese plant is capable of processing about 100,000 tons of lysine, 50,000 tons of threonine and 3,000 tons of nucleic acid per year, the company said.

CJ Cheil Jedang claims that once the Shenyang plant is on track, it will obtain a production capacity of 600,000 tons of lysine, topping its rival feed companies such as China-based GBT, Japan-based Ajinomoto Co. and U.S.-based ADM.

The Korean firm expects to hold 30 percent of the global feed market next year after the company’s lysine-processing plant in Iowa is completed, surpassing its rivals in processing lysine at 700,000 tons annually.

Having established its first overseas biotechnology plant in Pasuruan, Indonesia, in 1991, it opened three additional plants in Jombang in Indonesia, Liaocheng in China and Piracicaba in Brazil to produce nucleic acid, lysine and tryptophan.

The company plans to finish constructing another green biotech plant in Terengganu, Malaysia, to produce over 80,000 tons of methionine annually.

(joowonc@heraldcorp.com)