Billionaire Zong Qinghou, whose soft-drink maker Hangzhou Wahaha Group has made him the mainland's richest man, said he planned to diversify his business by opening retail outlets and acquiring mining projects overseas.
'If we want to go faster, we have to get into other industries,' said Zong, founder and chairman of Wahaha, the mainland's third-biggest beverage maker by market share.
He said the company planned to open 100 supermarkets and shopping malls in second- to fourth-tier cities on the mainland over the next couple of years. It was looking for a site for the first supermarket, which was likely to start operation this year.
'The main purpose for us to venture into retailing is to have a bigger say in distribution,' Zong, a delegate to the National People's Congress, said in Beijing ahead of the annual parliamentary session tomorrow.
He complained that when doing business with big supermarkets, suppliers and small distributors were often hit by payment delays, extra charges and high operating costs.
Ranked by Forbes magazine as the mainland's wealthiest person with a net worth of US$8 billion last year, the 65-year-old said he would seek to list the retailing business when the opportunity was mature.