Charoen Pokphand

Through its extensive investments, CP Group has been credited with changing the country's dietary habits and leading China's green revolution.

They imported seeds and vegetables from China and exported pigs and eggs to Hong Kong, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.

The CP Group expanded internationally exporting their contract farming formula across Southeast Asia and around the world to Mexico, Taiwan, Portugal, mainland China, Indonesia, Turkey, and the United States.

[12] By the 1980s, with Thailand becoming a full blown capitalist economy, the CP Group entered the aquaculture business, turning their formula to raising and marketing shrimp.

[12] The company increased its scope from selling vegetable seeds under the trademark of Rua Bin ("Aeroplane") to production of animal feed under Ek Chor's two elder sons, Jaran Chiaravanont and Montri Jiaravanont.

[14] The company was known for vertical integration, expanding into several business lines, adding breeding farms, slaughterhouses, processed foods production, and, later, its own chain of restaurants.

[11] In the 1980s, as mainland China opened up to foreign direct investment, the firm became the preferred partner for international brands such as Honda, Walmart, and Tesco.

[15] In 1990, the CP Group acquired a stake in TelecomAsia, a joint venture with US telecommunications firm NYNEX to build and operate two million telephone lines in Bangkok worth some $3 billion.

[13] CP's investment in poultry production on the mainland was credited with changing the country's dietary habits, as per capita consumption more than doubled by the end of the decade.

[17] On 10 May 2013, in spite of a lack of loan from the China Development Bank,[18][19] HSBC said "it was selling the 15.6 percent stake at HK$59 a share" to Charoen Pokphand Group.

This transaction made CP the third-largest shareholder in Itochu, and was marketed as an alliance between the two conglomerates with a focus on developing international food trading opportunities.

[22] On 9 March 2020, CP Group submitted the winning bid to purchase Thai retailer, Tesco Lotus, for about $10.6 billion.

[23] The purchase needed the approval of the Office of Trade Competition Commission (OTCC) as it could constitute a monopoly, given that CP already owns 7-Eleven convenience stores and the Makro cash-and-carry business.

[24] The sale became approved in Malaysia in November 2020 and in Thailand in December 2020, with rebranding of the acquired stores beginning in February 2021, replacing the Tesco corporate branding with that of Lotus's.

It marked its $150-million expansion by launching their affiliates in the Philippines and Indonesia, Vietnam, and also hard to reach economies like Myanmar and Cambodia.

[36] Listed in Hong Kong, CPP is one of the world's largest producers of feed and one of China's leading agricultural companies with factories nationwide.

[38] One of China's leading motorcycle producers Dayang Motors, recently signed a joint venture to begin production of cars in Thailand.

[12] In 1994, CP signed a joint venture agreement with American retail giant, Wal-Mart to establish super-retail stores throughout Asia and later dissolved it.

After a several-month-long investigation, in 2014 the British newspaper The Guardian reported that Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods purchases fishmeal, which it then feeds to its farmed prawns, from suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned with slaves.

As part of that process, CP Foods has reduced the number of suppliers who provide fishmeal for the production of shrimp feed.

CP Foods is a founding member of the Shrimp Sustainable Supply Chain Task Force (SSSC), established in July 2014, which has convened food producers, international retailers, and NGOs to map out a holistic improvement and audit plan for the Thai shrimp industry, and to identify and agree the steps and timetable to increase the sustainability and transparency of the supply chain.

[44] The key aim of CP Foods and the SSSC is to ensure that abuse of workers and damage to the maritime ecosystem in the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea is a thing of the past, and to restore trust in the industry.