Mr. Cai Limin, Vice Governor of Shandong Province meet Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco Group

Mr.Cai Limin, Vice Governor of Shandong Province meet Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco Group in Jinan on May 5th. Governor introduced Shandong foreign trade and economic development, including the key industries such as Hi-tech, advanced manufacture, energy saving & emission reduction, modern agriculture and service industry etc. Shandong had great advantages in population, resources, geography location and transportation, which create large market potential to develop commercial retail industry. Governor hoped to start with the project under discussion with Jinan, to further cooperate in retailing industry, logistics and training etc. Department of Foreign Trade & Economic Cooperation of Shandong Province will sign framework agreement with Tesco on bilateral cooperation, based on the retailing project. Sir Terry Leahy said that Shandong is one of the main cooperation partners of Tesco in China. LOI of supermarket projects in Jinan and Weifang had been signed, and real estate projects in Qingdao and Yantai is under investigation. Tesco group will strengthen the cooperation with Shandong, and set up the fourth regional headquarter besides Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing. Tesco is planning to build storage, processing and logistics centre after the quantity of Tesco supermarkets in Shandong growing big, and also interesting in cooperation with universities of Shandong to develop retail and logistics training. Tesco is the third largest retailing company in the world, listed 55th in 2007 Fortune top 500 enterprises, and have established 55 supermarkets in China.

Mr.Lv Zaimo, General Director of Shandong Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Department have attended the meeting.