As China’s construction boom slows and steel mills across the country scramble to find ways to bolster profits, one has hit on an unusual strategy – raising pigs.
Faced with a bleak outlook for its core business, Wuhan Iron & Steel, China’s fourth-largest steelmaker by production, is investing Rbm30bn ($4.7bn) over the next five years in non-steel sectors, including pig, fish and organic vegetable farming as well as logistics and chemicals.
Wuhan’s pig farm has quickly become the talk of the industry, but many of China’s powerful steel groups – which account for more than 40 per cent of global production and around 8 per cent of China’s gross domestic product – are also quietly expanding beyond their core business.