Arla Foods Ingredients this week participated for the first time in the food fair Food Ingredients China, in Guangzhou.

“Our presence at the fair was intended to mark the fact that Arla Foods now has its own sales office in China, where the past year has seen a strong increase in sales of our products,” said Nels Gaardahl, Executive Director, Arla Foods Ingredients in Japan. “We expect China to become a particularly important market for us in the years to come.”

The five Arla Foods Ingredients representatives left for Southern China before the Danish health authorities’ official warning against travelling to the area because of the outbreak of the deadly SARS lung-disease in Guangduong Province. Two of the five, Sami Kalevi Sassi from BU-Nutrition and Jesper Bagge Pedersen from AFI in Nr. Vium arrived from Denmark whereas Nels Gaardahl came from Japan and two locally employed colleagues came to the fair from Beijing.

“If the warning had come a few days earlier, I would probably have stayed away – like some visitors to the fair have done,” said Jesper Bagge Pedersen.

Over the past few days, he has been in daily contact with the head office in Nr. Vium, where Business Unit Manager for functional milk proteins Arnd Wilmsen emphasises that the Arla representatives where free to leave China but chose to stay.