China-N. Korea food additives joint venture operating smoothly: Xinhua

By Kim Young-gyo HONG KONG, June 6 (Yonhap) -- A China-North Korea joint venture that makes food additives has been operating smoothly in a display of close ties between the two countries, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said Monday. China's Liaoning Wellhope Agri-tech Co. and North Korea's Unpasan General Trading Company set up a joint venture, (North) Unpung Joint Operating Company, in 2006 in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital city. Liaoning Wellhope Agri-tech holds a 55 percent stake in the joint venture, while the North Korean trading firm controls 45 percent. In a dispatch from Pyongyang, Xinhua said the total assets of Unpung now reached 21 million yuan (US$3.24 million). During its nearly six years in operation, the firm made a total pre-tax profit of 15.21 million yuan, and its cumulative sales of food additives reached 18,720 tons. "At present, Unpung aims to become a first-class brand in the (North) Korean food additive industry," the news agency said in a Chinese-language report. "Demand for food additives is rapidly rising in North Korea as of late, and many companies need their employees to work overtime to meet demand." Quoting the Chinese head of the joint venture, Xie Jingming, the report said the firm's more than five years of business development and expansion cannot be separated from the deepening economic cooperation between China and North Korea. Economically impoverished North Korea's dependence on its strongest ally and largest benefactor has been growing as its economy slips further into isolation, as the international community maintains its economic embargo to get the communist country to give up its nuclear ambitions. According to a report compiled by the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), trade between the North and China in 2010 jumped 32 percent on-year to slightly more than US$3.46 billion. The two countries have recently moved toward carrying out joint development projects along the border. North Korea and China are expected to break ground next week on a joint project to turn an island near their border, Hwanggumpyong, into an industrial complex.