The 2023 edition of Feed Strategy’s World’s Top Feed Companies listing reports 147 companies with more than 1 million metric tons of compound feed production in 2022. This year's ranking features a new No. 1 feed producer: China’s New Hope Group. The company has long ranked in the Top 5, but assumes the top position due to its growth, changes among its peers, and new data acquired by the Top Feed Companies database research team.
Chinese pig and poultry producers have faced significant production and disease challenges, i.e. rising raw material costs, natural disasters, price pressures, and avian influenza and Africa swine fever (ASF) outbreaks. As a result, 2022 Chinese industrial feed increased by only 3% year over year, a significant slowdown compared with the growth rate of more than 10% in 2020 and 2021. (Source: China Feed Industry Association)
Despite these challenges, New Hope Liuhe Co. Ltd., the group’s feed producing affiliate, “achieved higher than the industry average growth in pig feed, aquatic feed and other high-margin varieties.”
In 2022, New Hope Liuhe produced 28.22 million tons of feed products, which included 10.7 million tons of pig feed, 15.26 million tons of poultry feed, 1.78 million tons of aquatic feed and 150,000 tons of premix, with operating revenue of USD$10.857 billion (CNY79.178 billion).
To learn more about the 147 companies leading global feed production and their 2022 compound feed production, the full 2023 World's Top Feed Companies report — complete with the ranking table — is available online now.
Investing in innovation
New Hope Group domestically launched the NHF Hongtong feed formulation system in 2022. The system, developed by the company with independent intellectual property rights, provides online feed formulation, nutritionists, dynamic adjustments, and the connection between formula and production in-process control.
“In the context of the sharp rise of feed raw material prices due to international geopolitical conflicts, the system has improved the company's resilience in the adjustment of feed formula,” New Hope Group reports. “Combined with the alternative formula strains, such as non-corn-type mixed diet, whole wheat diet and whole brown rice diet previously launched by the company, the system has made better iterative development and helped optimize the formula cost.”
New Hope Group's full 2022 Semi-Annual Report provides an in-depth snapshot of the challenges China's feed and animal protein industries faced last year.
Editor's note: Feed Strategy's Top Feed Companies database tracks the tonnage of more than 200 companies. The report highlights companies with production volumes in the previous calendar year, i.e. 2022's top producers featured in our 2023 feature article. To peruse the database, visit https://www.feedstrategy.com/worlds-leading-feed-producers/.
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