McDonald's invests in food supply chain in central China

WUHAN, July 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. fast food chain McDonald's has teamed up with four bakeries and food suppliers, including Bimbo and Tyson Foods, to jointly launch a food supply base in central China's Hubei Province.

The smart industrial park in Hubei's Xiaogan City, put into operation on Wednesday, is expected to produce nearly 300 million loaves of bread, 30,000 tonnes of meat products, 30 million pastries and two billion packaging products annually.

Phyllis Cheung, CEO of McDonald's China, said that McDonald's has been in China for over 30 years, adding that the launch of the smart industrial park for food supply is an important step in deepening its engagement in the Chinese market.

Cheung noted that the industrial park will further improve the supply efficiency of McDonald's outlets and accelerate the company's localization in China's central and western regions.

The industrial park in Xiaogan covers an area of more than 300,000 square meters and is built with a total investment of 1.5 billion yuan (about 206 million U.S. dollars) for food production, packaging and cold chain logistics.

"The average automation rate for each link in the industrial park exceeds 70 percent," Cheung said, adding that technologies like the Internet of Things and big data have been applied to achieve efficient integration from raw materials, manufacturing and warehousing to logistics and cold chain distribution, enabling real-time traceability of the entire process data.

McDonald's has opened more than 6,000 restaurants in China, making it the company's second-largest and fastest-growing market worldwide, according to Cheung.