South Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang Corp. aims to make its dumpling Bibigo brand a No.1 global seller in the traditional Asian cuisine category.

The company said Thursday it targets a sales milestone of 1 trillion won ($922.7 million) in Bibigo Mandu (dumpling in Korean) by 2020 and scale up its business overseas so that 70 percent of the brand’s total revenue comes from foreign markets.

Bibigo Mandu sales surged 52 percent year-on-year to 504.3 billion won in 2017, earning 266 billion won locally and 238.3 billion won globally, according to the company. Sales are projected to maintain their compound annual growth rate of over 30 percent, with the next three-year cumulative sales targeted to reach 2.5 trillion won.

Under this new initiative, CJ CheilJedang plans to expand its production base to three more countries - Russia, Vietnam and Germany - on top of China and the U.S.

The food maker will seek to cement its leading position in the U.S. when its 60 billion-won dumpling plant in New Jersey goes into operation next month. This would be the company’s third plant in the country after ones in Fullerton, California and Brooklyn, New York. It also plans to make inroads into the B2B dumpling market.

In China, it started operations at its new plant in Liaocheng, a city near Beijing, to penetrate the traditional home of Mantu in the northern region. Its southern outpost in Guangzhou ramped up capacity by more than threefold last year.

Local production in Russia begins next month after the company revamped facilities of Russian frozen food maker Ravioli, which it acquired last year to turn out its own Bibigo dumplings in Russia and broader Europe.

“We have plans to take our dumplings across Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe,” said a company official. “We’re also considering more mergers and acquisitions in foreign dumpling and frozen food companies to further expand our global presence.”

By Lee Hee-soo and Kim Hyo-jin

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