About Louis Dreyfus Company in China

Pioneer of China’s agricultural trade

It started with United States ex-President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972. As part of the delegation that followed, Louis Dreyfus Company conducted its first business with China in 1973, and became the first company to export cotton to China.

Long lasting relationships

A long history ensued, with our first office established in Shanghai in 1994. This was soon followed by a representative office in Beijing in 1995, which employed seven people. As China gradually opened to the west and consumption of grains and other agricultural commodities increased, our representative office helped us to establish long lasting relationships with many of the major state-owned enterprises responsible for the procurement and commercialization of agricultural commodities.  

Domestic opportunities

In 2005, following China’s ascension to the World Trade Organization, Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) became the first foreign company to establish a Wholly Foreign Owned Entity (WFOE) in the agricultural sector. This opened up domestic trading opportunities and marked the beginning of an era of participation and expansion in China’s domestic trade flows, which was also undergoing unprecedented growth at that time.

Location and people

LDC is present throughout the value chain, operating fixed assets and merchandizing a wide range of commodities throughout China with exception of five provinces. We employ close to 1 000 people in our offices and plants throughout China.

Our business lines

Our business lines in China include Coffee, Cotton, Freight, Grains, Juice, Oilseeds, Rice, Sugar and Global Markets.

Our assets

Our industrial footprint continues to grow as we seek to invest in assets that deliver products to meet the growing needs of our customers. We currently operate:

• four oilseeds crushing plants located in Tianjin, North China, the Yangtze River area in East China, and the Pearl Delta Region in South China. These service the needs of our customers in the feed mill sector, as well as in consumer vegetable oil 
• an apple juice crushing plant, located in the heart of the apple-growing region, Shaanxi province, which provides top quality apple juice products to customers in China and around the world
• a sugar refinery in Fujian province, which is capable of meeting the stringent standards of local and multinational customers in China and helps us to meet China’s growing need for high quality refined sugar.

Tailored supply chain solutions

We also continue to provide value in the merchandizing role that has made LDC famous. Combining our international origination capabilities with those in China, we provide tailored supply chain solutions to our customers to assure supply, quality of product and risk management.

Significant proportion of group trade flow

Given China’s importance in global commodity flows, our operations in China represent a large proportion of LDC's global activities. China is currently the largest importer of soybeans in the world, and combined with our presence in North and Latin America, we are involved in a significant proportion of soybean flows to the country.

Merchandizing activities

China is also a destination for many of the agricultural commodities that the Group merchandizes such as cotton, wheat, corn, sorghum, barley, dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS), soybean meal, corn ethanol, raw and white sugar, soybeans, rapeseed, vegetable oils (soy, rapeseed, canola, palm), green coffee, orange juice, grapefruit juice, orange oil and other products.

Member of two commodity exchanges

We are active in all domestic commodity exchanges in China and are members of the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) and the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (ZCE). Given our long trading history and well-recognized risk management philosophy, we are often consulted by various exchanges on policy and exchange rules.

Partnering for future growth

LDC recognizes that sustainable growth is achieved through long-term relationships built upon trust and win-win approaches. We place extraordinary value in partnering for growth be it through formalized joint ventures or simply long-term commercial agreements. Regardless of the type of alliance, we always recognize that our core values of humility, diversity, commitment and entrepreneurship play an important role in contributing to our success.

Quality standards

All of our assets comply with environmental and safety requirements demanded by the relevant competent organizations. Our products meet all the international quality standards required by our customers.

Managing risk to match supply with demand

Our Group’s success is attributed mainly to our sophisticated risk management process, which allows us to manage the risks inherent in complex supply chains that operate from field to end consumer. The risks we manage include logistical, operational, country, financial and commodity price and we seek to mitigate them for optimal outcome. Our ability to manage risk has been strengthened by our investment in farms, processing plants and logistics infrastructure and by working in close partnership with producers around the world.