Torben Friis Lange, vice-president of AAK AB, a Swedish manufacturer of high value-added speciality vegetable fats, led a delegation to visit Nantong city and the Nantong Economic and Technological Development Area (NETDA) in Jiangsu province on Aug 27.
The company representatives met with Sun Jianhua, Nantong's deputy mayor; Qu Baoxian, NETDA's Party secretary; Ren Qiangqiang, head of NETDA’s management committee; and other officials.
Sun, the deputy mayor, introduced NETDA’s advantages in location, industry, transport, talents and infrastructure. Its first-rate services will enhance AAK's future projects here.
Lange believes Nantong's conditions are helpful for the company as it looks for material suppliers and explores the market in the Yangtze River Delta area and greater China. It promised to cooperate with Nantong in cultivating talented personnel and bringing food enterprises to NETDA.
AAK is Europe's largest producer of high value-added speciality vegetable fats that account for 50 percent of Europe's total. It set up its headquarters in China in Shanghai in 2011. It has plans to build its first factory in China to produce 100,000 tons of food ingredients and additives per year.
The NETDA Free Trade Zone got the original go-ahead, on Jan 3, 2013, from the State Council, for a 5.29-sq-km area, in two parts.
Suzhou-Nantong science & technology industrial park
Equipment manufacturing industrial park
Urban-rural commercial zone
Nengda central business district
New materials industrial park
Medical treatment & health industrial park
Sci-tech industrial park
Precision machinery industrial park