North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region will build dairy industry clusters in the coming years to address the lack of milk source bases, according to information from the Inner Mongolia Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Department.

It is estimated that the entire dairy industry chain's output value in Inner Mongolia will reach 300 billion yuan ($43.87 billion) by 2025.

Deputy director Liu Yongzhi of the Inner Mongolia Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Department said that the autonomous region has invested 400 million yuan in special funding to help leading dairy enterprises – such as Yili and Mengniu – to build five milk production bases. The dairy facilities will be located along the basins of the Yellow, Nengjiang and Xiliao rivers, as well as in the Hulunbuir and Huuliin Gol grasslands.

Large-scale pastures that realize the integrated development of forage planting, dairy cow breeding and dairy processing will also be built successively in Hohhot, Hulunbuir and Bayannuur cities. 

In the next three to five years, one million cows will be added to the autonomous region, and the dairy processing capacity will double.

Inner Mongolia will also promote the transformation and upgrading of dairy processing enterprises and accelerate the promotion and application of new-generation information technologies such as big data, 5G, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and industrial internet.

Regional authorities aim to improve green manufacturing in the dairy processing industry and cultivate large-scale dairy enterprises with strong international competitiveness.

Liu stated that, at present, the number of dairy cows in Inner Mongolia has reached more than 1.2 million, and the annual production volume of milk is more than 5.7 million metric tons. 

The dairy industry in Inner Mongolia has become an advantageous industry with an annual output value of more than 100 billion yuan. Its milk output, processing industry scale and dairy product market share rank first in the country.