RANDERS, Denmark – COFCO Meat Holdings Inc., a unit of China’s largest food business, COFCO Group, signed an agreement with Europe’s largest pork producer, Danish Crown, to buy $100 million in pork in 2020. The two companies signed the deal during the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai.

The agreement further solidifies Danish Crown’s position as a favored business partner in China where the company opened its first pork processing plant in Pinghu, just outside of Shanghai, in September.

“We have occasionally traded with COFCO for a number of years. Now our trade has reached a scale that makes COFCO a very important partner for Danish Crown,” said Lars Albertsen, global sales director at Danish Crown. In fact, the contracts that we have entered into in two rounds in recent months have been of a size that — in terms of value — make them the largest single sales contracts in Danish Crown’s history.”

In 2017, Danish Crown signed a memorandum of understanding with Alibaba Group to sell pork on Tmall, an e-commerce site owned by Chinese retailer Alibaba. The following year, Danish Crown reached a deal valued at €300 million to supply weekly deliveries of 250 tonnes of Danish pork over five years to Win-Chain, an aggregated sourcing platform owned by Alibaba.

“We are really pleased with the agreement with COFCO Meat Holdings,” said Niels Knudsen, Danish Crown’s sales director in China. “It underlines that we at Danish Crown have reached a preferred supplier status for the largest player in the Chinese market.”