INCHEON -- South Korean food manufacturer CJ CheilJedang said Friday that it aimed to become the world leader in dumplings, expanding its global presence through its Bibigo dumpling lines.

At an Innovation Seminar held at the company’s Incheon Frozen Food Plant, the company said that it hoped to reach 1 trillion won ($850 million) in worldwide dumpling sales by 2020, with 70 percent of those sales coming from overseas. The ambitious goal seeks to triple sales from 2016, which reached 330 billion won in Korea and overseas. 

CJ CheilJedang executives showed confidence in the company’s ability to meet the goal with aggressive investments in overseas markets.

“Our approach is less one of taking away other companies’ market share, and more one of creating a whole new category with a new product,” said Shin Hyun-soo, CJ CheilJedang’s Head of Food Global Business. “If we do our business right, we believe our goal is attainable.”

To prepare for increasing demand of CJ CheilJedang’s dumplings offered under the Bibigo brand, the company is investing more than 200 billion won to expand its production and export capabilities abroad.

Currently, the company is running production plants in Incheon, Los Angeles and New Jersey in the US, and Guangzhou in China. The company will be expanding the New Jersey and Guangzhou plants this year, and adding additional plants in Beijing, China, Frankfurt, Germany, St. Petersburg in Russia and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam.

The expansion in overseas production is made possible through mergers and acquisitions of local companies that either make products similar to dumplings, or specialize in creating frozen foods.

“Companies that we are looking to acquire are generally those manufacturing frozen ready-made snacks,” said Shin. “The latest confirmed acquisition was of a company that makes pelmeni, or Russian-style dumplings.”

“A plant takes seven or eight months to start running a new line. The investments may seem excessive when compared with current revenue, but we decided to bet on the quality of our products. We may not reach our goal, but we feel compelled to make these decisions quickly even with risk,” said Kang Sin-ho, CJ CheilJedang’s Vice President of Food Business Unit.

Since their initial release in 2013, Bibigo dumplings have grown to reach 40 percent market share in Korea and 11 percent of the market in the US, according to CJ CheilJedang. The company says that the dumplings’ success is due to their thin, chewy skins and chunky, juicy meat fillings.

The dumpling push is part of CJ CheilJedang’s overall efforts to promote Korean food products, which the company has dubbed “K-food,” in overseas markets.

“Dumplings are more accessible (globally) because it is a wrapping food, which already exists all over the world,” said Kang, who noted that it would take longer for other products like kimchi or gochujang chili paste to take hold in overseas markets. 

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)