Danish Crown has opened its first processing plant in China as Europe's largest pork producer seeks to cater to the needs of consumers with an appetite for high-quality meat and the means to pay for it.

The facility will import frozen meat from Denmark and process them into chilled and packaged products. It was launched on Wednesday in the eastern province of Zhejiang, less than 100 kilometers from Shanghai.

The company's executives say the plant will mostly focus on supplying consumers in and around Shanghai — a small morsel of the Chinese market which nonetheless is home to a population similar to that of Germany.

CEO of Danish Crown Jais Valeur told Reuters news agency the processing factory will produce 14,000 tons of pork products annually. The company has partnered with tech giant Alibaba to sell its goods through online platforms and brick-and-mortar Hema supermarkets for the first five years.

Pork is traditionally Chinese people's meat of choice, finding its way into noodle dishes, dumplings and even mooncakes. In 2018, the average Chinese chowed down on around 30 kilograms of pork, according to estimates by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 

This year has seen Chinese people shunning pork as African Swine Fever (ASF) hit supplies and pushed up prices, but Danish Crown is turning the grim situation into an opportunity for growth. The meat company is looking to establish itself as a premium brand and market itself to consumers willing to fork out a little extra for safe products.

Pork prices in the country are already at record highs, reaching 38.15 yuan (5 U.S. dollars) per kilo, a 46.7-percent rise year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The price increase bodes well for Danish Crown, which aims to sell its products at a 10-15 percent premium over local goods.

The company has so far exported 240,000 tonnes of pork to China this year, up 20 percent year-on-year, and the figure is forecast to swell as China's hog herds continue to shrink.

ASF, which is harmless to people, has ravaged China's pork industry since it emerged late last year. Some 100 million pigs have either died because of the virus or been culled by authorities to stop the spread of the disease. The contagion has led farmers to stop restocking their herds which, along with the dwindling pig population, is causing pork shortages, prompting authorities in parts of the country to release their emergency reserves of frozen pig meat and the government to look towards Europe and Brazil to plug the gap.

China imported 182,227 tonnes of pork in July, according to customs data, up 107 percent from a year earlier. On Monday, the country also added 25 new meat plants in Brazil to its list of authorized exporters as it seeks to diversify its meat imports.

(With input from Reuters)