China, Portugal leaders witness signing of cooperation agreement for new COFCO International Centre of Excellence in Portugal

LISBON, Portugal – Chinese President Xi Jinping and Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa today attended the signing of a memorandum of understanding between COFCO International and AICEP, Portugal’s Trade and Investment Agency, in Lisbon, for the establishment of the COFCO International Centre of Excellence for corporate shared services, in the Porto region, Portugal. The agreement was signed by Jun Lv, Chairman of COFCO Corporation and Luis Castro Henriques, Chairman and CEO of AICEP.

Johnny Chi, Chairman and CEO of COFCO International said: “Portugal’s positive approach towards international business, skilled human resources and strategic location were the main reasons for choosing Portugal over several other candidate locations. We foresee the Centre of Excellence playing a key role in supporting our global business growth and efficiency enhancement programme.”

Luis Castro Henriques said: “We are extremely happy to attract this significant commitment to Portugal which will contribute to the development of the Porto region through job creation and further investment.”

The new Centre of Excellence started operations this month and will ultimately create up to 400 new jobs across IT, procurement, HR and finance, providing state of the art services to COFCO International businesses globally.