Soumoulou and Rubino extended warm welcome to Lv Jun and his delegation before giving a detailed presentation on ACA’s membership make-up, business structure, asset distribution, purchase and storage capacity, and operation model. They expressed hope to supply more soybeans to COFCO Corporation by leveraging its complete purchase and storage network, its strong purchase and storage capacity, and its close bond with agricultural cooperatives and vast number of farmers. They expected both sides to strengthen cooperation regarding COFCO International’s soybean oil extraction and construction of dedicated railway line in Timbúes industry park for benefits of value chain appreciation. They also hoped that both sides should enhance cooperation regarding Argentine’s honey export, hog-raising and slaughter, and beef export so as to market more Argentina agriproducts in China. It is reported that ACA, which was established in 1922, is the largest cooperative organization in Argentine made up of 150 primary agricultural cooperatives serving over 50,000 farmers with assets distributed in ten provinces of Argentine and a static capacity of 10 million tons. With its own grain ports, ACA is mainly engaged in grain purchase, storage and trade, accounting for nearly 20% of grains market in Argentine. Meanwhile, as a major client of COFCO International, ACA is also an active player in fertilizer, seed, ethanol, logistics, grain brokerage, insurance, honey, hog raising and processing, and beef export markets.
After giving a briefing on COFCO Corporation’s development history, asset scale, operating capability, and corporate mission, Lv Jun noted that given the different natural resource endowment of China and Argentine, COFCO and ACA enjoy their respective advantages in upstream and downstream of value chain, thus leaving considerable room for high level of bilateral cooperation. He hoped that both sides should give play to their respective advantages based on existing cooperation and team up to build a fully-integrated value chain from farmland to table so as to provide more agriproducts of higher quality to Chinese market. Meanwhile, COFCO will continue to expand new business cooperation and growth points, further explore models of cooperation regarding honey, hog raising and slaughter and beef import, and dispatch a team of COFCO employees with expertise in these fields to Argentine for investigation at an appropriate time. Lv Jun emphasized that ACA’s business model and experience can well illuminate the reform of China’s agriculture, which is transforming from a mode of production characterized by individual operation of each farming household to cooperative mode. COFCO will make careful study of ACA’s practice and draw on its experience before recommending them to relevant departments and enterprises.
ACA vice president Julian Echazarreta, origination director Julio Locca, secretary Ruben Borgogno, deputy director of COFCO Corporation General Office Wang Jixue, and chief of South Cone at COFCO International Alfonso and Zou Yesheng attended the meeting.
