Land O’Lakes, Royal Agrifirm Group form joint venture in China

Two global agricultural cooperatives, U.S.-based Land O’Lakes and The Netherlands-based Royal Agrifirm Group, have announced that they will be setting up a dairy animal feed joint venture in China. The new company, Agrilakes, will leverage existing market knowledge, insights, technologies, and research capability from both Land O’Lakes and Agrifirm to provide service to China-based feed customers and dairy farmers.

“With this new investment in China alongside Agrifirm, we are continuing Land O’Lakes’ successful international commercial growth strategy focused on partnering with locally successful companies and working together to drive market expansion,” said Jerry Kaminski, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Land O’Lakes. “Thanks to Agrifirm’s established infrastructure and reputation in China, paired with Land O’Lakes’ strong research and technology expertise, we are confident this new joint venture is well positioned to help grow both companies.”

The new joint venture will initially be based in Agrifirm’s existing manufacturing plant in Tianjin, with plans to build a new dairy premix and specialty plant on the adjacent property. Both partner companies bring experience operating in China to the joint venture. Land O’Lakes currently leverages capabilities and proprietary products of its subsidiary businesses Purina Animal Nutrition and WinField United crop protection to help improve dairy productivity in China. It also operates a training facility in China—the Dairy Farming Institute—in partnership with Nestlé. The facility features two training farms, trial fields, and a training center to help local forage growers and commercial dairy farmers develop their skills.

Nuscience, a wholly owned subsidiary of Agrifirm and its key global animal nutrition entity, has been in China under the brand LVSAI for 20 years and is currently operating two young animal nutrition and premix plants and a business unit that sells feed ingredients and multi-species feed additives.

The formation and funding of Agrilakes has been approved by the boards of directors of both cooperatives and is pending appropriate antitrust and regulatory approvals.