BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s state grain stockpiler Sinograin is investigating the quality of corn in one of its warehouses in northeastern China, it said in a statement on Sunday, after a video shared on social media alleged that the site was full of mouldy, low-grade corn.
A video posted on China’s Weibo platform and viewed by Reuters shows a pile of corn inside a warehouse managed by a Sinograin subsidiary in Zhaodong in Heilongjiang province.
Much of the grain in the video appears to be mouldy and there also appear to be large amounts of foreign material.
Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the video, which was posted online on Saturday.
Sinograin said that it had sent a team the next day to investigate the condition of supplies at the warehouse named in the video.
“If the issue is true, (we) will seriously deal with the people responsible,” the stockpiler said.
China, the world's second-biggest corn producer, buys large volumes of the grain each year for state reserves but has encountered quality problems in the past. [reut.rs/3iYFGwI]
The allegations of poor quality come as corn prices rise on concern over tight supplies in the market.
The grain in the Zhaodong warehouse came from a one-off corn purchase to support prices, the video said. Sinograin last made such a purchase in 2016, of about 16 million tonnes, one market analyst said, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter.
In the video seen by Reuters, a woman who claims to have purchased corn from Sinograin shows the corn, allegedly inside the Qinggang Rongchang Modern Agriculture Development Co warehouse rented by Sinograin Zhaodong, and says that it is mixed with grain used to make alcohol.
The unidentified woman in the video also accuses local warehouse managers of charging her additional fees for grain delivery and of failing to supply the amount agreed in the contract.
Reporting by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton; Editing by David Goodman
July 13, 2020 at 08:37PM
https://ift.tt/2Oj5XI3
China's Sinograin investigates corn quality in northeast warehouse - Reuters
https://ift.tt/3gguREe
Corn
No comments:
Post a Comment