Recently, Bluestar’s M&A of Adisseo was further written by the China Business Administration Case Center of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management as a case to be included in the database. This was the second inclusion following that in 2015, marking the progress of Bluestar’s M&A of Adisseo so far. It has become a typical case of a state-owned enterprise merging an overseas company, featuring successful management and continuous improvement in operation capacity.
The case center is a service institution specializing in business administration case research, case development, development of case library, and case teaching & training in the School of Economics and Management. With the aim of “pooling business wisdom and promoting teaching innovation”, the center is the first in China to establish a case development model in which professors guide research assistants to develop high-quality cases targeting local corporate practices and to facilitate their use nationwide so as to serve the development of China’s business administration education. Currently, 900-plus universities in China have officially purchased or tried the right to use Tsinghua University’s case library, while large enterprises have also adopted its cases in batches in their internal training. The China Business Administration Case Library has included over 1,000 teaching cases covering all sectors and the subject area of business administration teaching, involving business strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship, accounting and control, finance, IT application & production management, human resources, and leadership. In developing each case, the center strictly adheres to R&D standards, requiring long-term follow-up and field research of target companies, with an average development period of about 6 months.
In 2006, Bluestar acquired Adisseo, a France-based company, for 400 million euros. It has successfully completed the integration and profitability improvement in the following decade, with annual revenue of over 10 billion yuan. Boasting 10 research centers worldwide and production bases in Europe, the US and China, Bluestar has developed and promoted sustainable nutrition solutions for the animal feed sector, serving 3,900 customers in over 110 countries and regions.
As China’s largest investment case in France in 2006, the M&A has demonstrated the vision and strength of Chinese companies to participate in international M&A and market competition. The managerial teams on both sides have coordinated with each other in a short time, with their corporate cultures fully integrated. In early 2014, with the support of Bluestar, the phase-I project of Bluestar Adisseo’s 70,000-ton liquid methionine plant in Nanjing was up and running, making profits. In 2015, Adisseo went public on the A-share market, representing the first successful case of securitization of a central enterprise’s overseas M&A project in the domestic capital market. The listing has provided strong financial support for the Bluestar’s overseas subsidiary in expanding the Chinese market. In March 2018, Adisseo and Seventure Partners, one European venture capital firm, announced that AVF, an innovative venture capital fund, would be established to support the company’s sustainable development in the areas of animal health and feed & nutrition.
The latest years witnessed that Bluestar has seized the opportunity of China’s circulation to make arrangements for its overseas enterprises to develop the Chinese market. Since 2015, Bluestar has realized a dual-platform mechanism for Adisseo’s R&D focus by building research centers in France and China to serve the world simultaneously. In October 2020, China R&D center was officially established in the Nanjing plant, marking the stage of Adisseo consolidating its R&D strength and expanding its market deployment in China and the rest of Asia. Also in 2020, Calysseo, a joint venture between Adisseo and Calysta, the world’s first commercial plant for producing Feedkind protein, was launched in Changshou District, Chongqing, with the phase-I annual capacity of 20,000 tons scheduled to be up and running in 2022. This is an important step for Adisseo to enter the Asian aquafeed sector. BANC2, the phase-II project of Nanjing liquid methionine plant, is also well underway as planned, bolstering Adisseo’s leading position in producing methionine. Bluestar will also make use of its industrial advantages, increase investment in science, technology and innovation, and devote itself to building a technology cradle of animal nutrition and leading the modern industrial chain.
For 10-odd years, Adisseo has steered into the fast lane of development. Professor Li Donghong of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management has followed this case for many years, mining and refining its strategic blueprint and detailed design in the management integration. In 2020, he even personally led a team to visit the management of Bluestar and Adisseo and related personnel and investigate Adisseo latest development in recent years, completing two latest management cases for teaching. Specifically, Bluestar’s M&A of Adisseo (C) tells the story of Bluestar’s new strategic initiatives in the years since the initial completion of the M&A of Adisseo in 2012, which has driven the growth of Adisseo. Adisseo: Focus or Diversification details about Adisseo’s practice of diversifying its business, in addition to its main arm of methionine, by continuously expediting the development of other divisions in multiple ways. The two cases were included in China Business Administration Case Center, which not only demonstrates the management practice of Chinese enterprises, but also embodies the growing maturity of Bluestar’s internationalization strategy.