The head office of Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co in Hohhot [Photo/Hohhot Daily]

Hohhot in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region is reportedly gearing up to create a full dairy industry supply chain with an annual output of 100 billion yuan ($15.43 billion).

That's under the city's three-year action plan for the high-quality development of a green food processing industry cluster centered on the dairy sector.

According to the plan, by 2023 Hohhot will have built 20 large-scale dairy farms to produce cow's milk and 20 dairy farms producing goat milk. At the same time, 1.5 million mu (100,000 hectares) in forage pastors will have been established. It's estimated that the annual output value of the dairy industry supply chain will reach a staggering 220 billion yuan.

Intelligent robots swing into action at Yili's automated milk factory. [Photo/Hohhot Daily]

The action plan was released during the ninth China Dairy Science and Technology Conference, which was held in Hohhot on July 23, with the goal of mapping out a path for the future development of the area's dairy industry.

The conference attracted the participation of leading experts, academics and business representatives engaged in the dairy, lactic acid bacteria and associated industries.

The dairy industry is one of Hohhot's – and Inner Mongolia's – most competitive industries.

In 2019, with the support and guidance of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the city broke ground on the new National Dairy Technology Innovation Center.

Of five industrial parks in Hohhot, two are focused on cultivating and developing dairy industry clusters: the Chilechuan Dairy Development Zone and the Holinger Dairy Development Zone.

Last year, the city's dairy industry generated revenue of 220 billion yuan, accounting for 51 percent of the country's total dairy sales.