WH Group history, profile and corporate video
WH Group, formerly known as Shuanghui Group, is a publicly-traded Chinese multinational meat and food processing company headquartered in Hong Kong. It was established in 1958 as Luohe Cold Storage, which subsequently renamed as Henan Luohe Meat Products Processing United Factory in 1977.
In 1989, the “Shuanghui” brand was lauched.
In 2014, it was renamed from Shuanghui International to WH Group, though one of its subsidiaries, Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Company, retained the Shanghui brand.
Along with its long history, the company completed many acquisitions, including John Morrell (1989), Carroll’s Foods and the largest hog producer in the US Murphy Farms (1999-2000), pork farm Animex from Poland (1999-2006), Farmland Foods (2003), ComTim in Romania (2004), Smithfield Foods (2013), California’s largest pork processor, Clougherty (2016), Pini in Poland, and Elit and Vericom in Romania (2017).
The name of the company is derived from the initials of “Wanzhou Holdings,” where the Chinese characters “wan” and “zhou” connote eternity and continents, respectively.
The company’s global platform integrates a consolidated pork business chain including hog production, hog slaughtering and processing, packaged meats, as well as distribution of packaged meats and fresh pork, to form a leading competitive advantage in the pork industry.
WH Group’s business involves multiple well-recognized brands and a strongly diversified product portfolio, including Shuanghui, Smithfield, Eckrich, Farmland, Armour, Farmer John, Kretschmar, John Morrell, Cook’s, Gwaltney, Carando, Margherita, Curly’s, Healthy Ones, Krakus, Berlinki, Morliny, Morliny, Mazury, Elit and Veri brands, Premia, Pomo, and Pizzaro.
With more than 100 000 employees, WH Group is considered one of the largest pork producers in the world and one of the largest meat producers in China. According to Forbes, it is considered one of the top 2000 largest public companies in the world.
*Information from Forbes.com, Wikipedia.org, and www.wh-group.com.
**Video published on YouTube by “Quân Phan“.