Grains Giant COFCO Swallows Up Textile Trader Chinatex

(Beijing) – A new merger between COFCO Corp. and another state-owned food and agricultural products supplier will help China's largest foodstuffs conglomerate secure its slice of the global and domestic edible oil processing and cotton markets, COFCO said.

COFCO's merger with Chinatex is part of a broader effort by Beijing to consolidate various sectors, from railroad builders to agricultural products and steel makers, to reduce excess capacity and overheated competition, and produce a handful of players with the skills and scale to compete globally.