01/03/2010 (Bloomberg) - Wilmar International Ltd., the world’s biggest palm-oil trader, aims to expand its India business to about half of China in 10 years as rising incomes lift demand for processed foods in the South Asian nation.

The expansion in India will include crushing oilseeds, and refining and bottling cooking oil, Chief Executive Officer Kuok Khoon Hong said today in an interview in Singapore, where Wilmar is based. The company supplies about half of China’s cooking oil demand.

Wilmar plans to expand more rapidly in India after tax breaks and rising incomes helped the country overtake China as the world’s largest buyer of palm oil last year. Palm oil futures climbed 37 percent in the past 12 months in Malaysia as the global economy rebounded from the worst slump since the Great Depression.

“Our company grows very fast, so we have to look into new businesses to expand into,” Kuok said.

Wilmar shares, which more than doubled in the past year, rose 2.6 percent to S$6.67 at the close of trading in Singapore, making it today’s fourth-best performer on the Straits Times Index.

Wilmar runs five crushing plants in the major oilseed producing areas in India, he said today. The company owns half of Gujarat-based Adani Wilmar Ltd., which sells cooking oil to 20 million households in India, according to Adani’s Web site.

India’s economy may grow 8.2 percent in the financial year starting April 1, according to finance ministry estimates on Feb. 25. Industrial output rose 16.8 percent in December, the fastest pace since at least 1994, the government said on Feb. 12.

Soaring Profit

Wilmar’s annual profit in 2009 rose 32-fold to $1.88 billion from $58 million in 2005 as demand soared for vegetable oil in China, the world’s largest consumer. China accounted for more than half of Wilmar’s $16.46 billion revenue in 2007, according to data on the Bloomberg.

Pre-tax profit from its oilseeds and grains business rose to $145.8 million in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 2009, from a year earlier, even as prices of soybeans, crushed to make cooking oil, rose 12 percent in the period, boosting costs for companies in China, the world’s biggest importer of the beans.

Soybean futures rose to an average of $10.05 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade in the fourth quarter from $9 a bushel a year earlier.

“Market volatilities present opportunities,” Kuok said. The company’s crushing margins in China will continue to be “better than competition,” as it hedges its requirements.

Wilmar cancelled its plan to list its China unit in Hong Kong after its financial adviser told the company the shares will fetch a lower price-to-earnings ratio than planned, Kuok said.

“It doesn’t make sense to list it,” Kuok told analysts at a briefing today in Singapore.

Wilmar also plans to enter the sugar-milling and the cane- plantation businesses in Indonesia and expand its rice and flour milling and oilseed crushing businesses in China, Kuok said at the briefing. The company aims to double its milling capacity in China to at least 2 million metric tons of rice and flour, he said.