Synutra's New Plant Put in Service, Doubling Total Capacity to 70 Million lbs a Year to Meet Surging Demand in China
Monday May 15, 6:44 pm ET
QINGDAO, China and ROCKVILLE, Md., May 15 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Synutra International, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SYUT - News), a leading manufacturer of dairy-based nutritional products for infants, children and adults in China, has put in service a new facility that nearly doubles the Company's total annual milk drying capacity to about 32,000 metric tons (70 million pounds/lbs) to meet increasing demand in the booming Chinese market.
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The new Chabei #3 Plant is the first of two new milk-drying plants management has planned to bring into production. Commissioning of an additional tower dryer plant, with a similar capacity, will be completed in Junchuan in northeastern China by the end of 2007. This will become another strategic manufacturing base for Synutra in the near future. In addition to acquiring new spray-drying capabilities, over the next 12 to 18 months Synutra will also expand its dry-mixing capacities in Qingdao.
Dr. Chi-Tai Huang, Synutra Director of Technologies, said, "The large and growing demand for our nutritional products has pushed our production close to capacity. The planned increases in production capacity will enable us to meet immediate demand, expand our customer base and increase market share. This in turn should continue to fuel the strong growth we have had in consecutive quarters since March 2005, which included revenue growth as high as 98%."
The new tower dryer at Chabei #3 Plant has a throughput of 2,000 kg per hour, or 14,000 metric tons per year. Leading European suppliers developed this state-of-the-art full service spray-drying facility, with key equipment and controls designed and fabricated in Europe. This new plant is capable of raw milk receiving, slurry mixing and preparation with skim milk, whey protein, various lipids and premixes, evaporation, pasteurization, drying, agglomeration, commercial packaging, as well as full CIP (cleaning-in-place) process. Additionally, Chabei's process line is uniquely designed for inline addition of DHA and ARA and other thermal sensitive ingredients, to minimize nutrients loss due to thermal processing.
About Synutra International, Inc.
Synutra operates six subsidiaries developing, producing, distributing and selling dairy-based nutritional products across the People's Republic of China. It offers its products for infants, children, adults and pregnant women and nursing mothers under the brand series of "Super," "U-Smart" and "U-Strong." The Group's extensive sales network covers 24 provinces, 227 cities and more than 800 counties throughout China. For more information, please contact Weiguo Zhang of Synutra, Inc. (301 840 3888, wzhang@synutra.com), Brian Rafferty of Taylor Rafferty (212 889 4350, synutra@taylor-rafferty.com) or visit: www.synutra.com. |
