We started the day at 7:00 am, in our suits, on our way to Taiwanese owned Uni-President Enterprises Corporation.  Uni-President is a very large competitor and is the #2 enterprise in the food manufacturing industry.  The company's successes can be attributed to their juice and noodle businesses in China.  Once we arrived, we followed a brief presentation on the company's background. One recurring story that we have noticed on this trip is that even though competition is "tense" in China, companies, including Uni-President, are able to develop and expand quickly and successfully in a short period of time.

For example, Uni-President was established in 1993 and now it has over 2,500 employees. Following the presentation was a tour of some of Uni-President's manufacturing facilities concerning their juice and their noodles products.  Amazing was the speed at which the machines were able to operate while maintaining precision. Also, their capacity was outstanding: we were told that 110,000 boxes were completed per day. At the end of our visit, most of our groups were able to interview members of the R&D staff to get more insight and information for their final research video. Then, we were back on the bus. We were thankful not only for their openness to us, but also for the free samples of soy milk that they had provided.

We took a drive to the other side of Shanghai for lunch.  The restaurant selections were plentiful because our tour guide Jo, took us to a shopping center.  Our mouths watered as we looked up the 9 floors and saw food service places everywhere.  We all had our own opportunity to eat where we wanted to.  Some people opted to go to a Chinese restaurant, others went for sushi, some fancied Dairy Queen, while others dined at Pizza Hut.  It was nice to finally have a taste of ÒhomeÓ while in China.

As we pulled away from the shopping center, we realized we were right next to the Oriental Pearl.  When everyone looked outside their windows, the clicks of the cameras going off filled the bus.  Until this afternoon, we had only seen the Tower from the other side of the river.  Looking up at it, you can truly see how beautiful it is.  The design of it is unlike anything we have ever seen.  We couldnÕt help but think of how big of an engineering feat it has to be to support a building of that shape.  The tower is a symbol of Shanghai and to have been that close to it is a great feeling.

From the amazing skyline we then drove towards Shanghai Yihan & Kerry Oils and Grains Industrial Co., Ltd, where Freek Boelen gave a brief introduction about their company.  We learned about the cooking oil sector as there is a lot that goes into the operation from farm to fork.  Yihan & Kerry Oils also has huge soybean crushing capacity at 50,000 tons per day which ranks #1 in the world.  In addition he also shared his invaluable experience about business in China.  He told us some aspects we didn't normally think about such as traffic, pollution, people, education and language.  After touring a couple of their factories and product lines, such as their oil bottling plant we got a first hand look at how the raw materials got processed for consumers.

To close our day we were blessed to have the opportunity to have a nice dinner with China Eximbank Shanghai Branch at the Feng Seagull Restaurant while appreciating a wonderful night view of the Huangpu River and the Bund. After Mr. Yu gave us a warm welcome, he explained the reason for serving the shrimp dish first: the word for shrimp in Shanghai dialect is close to the word "Welcome."  We were truly honored to be hosted by Eximbank and the food had a lot of delicious local flavor.  We finished dinner and caught our bus back to our hotel through a busy night in Shanghai in order to catch a plane the next morning for Hong Kong.