Joyvio Group, a subsidiary of Legend Holdings that was built to invest and operate in the agricultural and food value chains, has made a strategic investment of $44 million in Chinese snack company, Huawen Food.
In December 2015 Joyvio became the largest fruit company in China through its merger with China’s Golden Wing Mau that brought together the two leading fruit companies in the country with combined sales of US$773 million. Today, Joyvio is China’s leading producer of blueberries and kiwifruit, and has been pursuing overseas strategic partnerships in Chile with Subsole, and in Australian with Perfection Fresh. More recently, the company began branding bananas from the Philippines.
In addition to Joyvio’s standing as a top fruit producer in China, the company also has businesses that produce tea, wine, cherries, grapes, nuts, snacks, seafood and spirits. Aside from large-scale farming operations in China, Chile, and Australia, the group also has sorting and processing facilities, top industry breeding programs, cold chain and logistics hubs, branding and marketing networks, and technology offices according to the company website.
Huawen Food has been in business for two decades, and specializes in producing a line of snacks geared for the Chinese market including pickled fish, flavored tofu, and duck products that it markets under its Jinzai brand.
The Launch of Joyvio
As the standard of living improved in China, Legend Holding noticed that more affluent Chinese consumers were willing to spend more on high quality, safe foods. Legend did its homework, investing more than one billion yuan (US$14.6 million) and hiring a consulting firm to explore the fruit industry, before deciding to enter the market with premium blueberries and kiwi fruit in 2013.
Initially establishing 670 hectares of blueberries in Qingdao, China, Joyvio now has blueberry operations in Liaoning, Hubei Jingmen, Shangdong, and in southern Chile, while the company has grown to have kiwi orchards in Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Henan provinces in China and in central Curico region of Chile for year-round production.
Joyvio’s parent company, Legend Holdings reportedly raised nearly $2 billion in a 2015 initial public offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong stock exchange, selling 352.9 million shares at HK$42.98 (US$5.54) per share according to Bloomberg.
Of this total, the investment group pre-sold $950 million worth of shares, or almost half of its offering to more than 20 new cornerstone investors. The group’s largest investor as of June 2015 was CAS Holdings, the investment arm of the Chinese Academy of Sciences which established the group in 1984, reports the Financial Times.
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Lynda Kiernan