How it started
History
In 1987, Kuok Khoon Hong was sent to China by his uncle Robert Kuok to explore the market. He noticed that most people there used unbranded soybean oil that was easy to deteriorate and was harmful to health. Kuok believed that there was an opportunity to enter the China grain and oil market.
In 1988, Yihai Group was established under Kerry Oil and Grains and its first cooking oil processing plant was set up in China.
In 1991, Yihai Group launched Arawana, its first bottled cooking oil product brand to the Chinese market. The product proved popular and by 1999 sales reached 3,000 tonnes.
At the end of 2006, Wilmar International acquired Kerry Oil and Grains for $2.7 billion and merged it with Yihai Group to form Yihai Kerry. In that year some media claimed that Wilmar and COFCO Group had control over the cooking oil prices in China.
In 2007, Yihai Kerry expanded to rice products and in 2008 expanded to flour and grain products.
From Wikipedia’s article on Yihai Kerry, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2