Unilever announced recently to build a new manufacturing base in Meishan, Sichuan province. This is another big investment of Unilever in China after the Tianjin base construction started this March.

The new Meishan base covers an area of about 400 mus. In the first phase, the investment into the base is about 300 million yuan and it is expected to start officially for production in May, 2014. The main product line will be detergent and production capacity will reach 200,000 tons. In the future, it will gradually develop to produce all Unilever's products in China, which will meet all the demands in western China market and even will cover export business.

“We choose Meishan is not only for cheap logistics, raw materials and labor cost there as we hope to be close to the growing western China market as well”, said Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever.

For Unilever at present, 60% of its sales in China are from emerging markets such as western China, which contributes 80% of the overall sales growth of Unilever, said Polman.

Till now, Unilever has finished its overall manufactory layout in China that Tianjin base in North, Anhui base in South Central and Sichuan base in West China.

At the same, other international consumer-goods companies such as P&G and L’Oreal are all targeted at western China market with large-sum of investment there. “With the competition in first- and second- tier cities tends to be saturated and white-hot, large numbers of consumer-goods companies are aimed at the market in Midwest China and small cities, where competition will be more and more heated as well. Consequently, only those with early arrangement can preempt opportunities”, said an insider.