An award and certificate are conferred on Pan Gang, president of the Yili Group. [Photo provided to en.hhhtnews.com]

Pan Gang, president of dairy giant the Yili Group, was one of a select group to be awarded with the title of 2021-2022 National Outstanding Entrepreneur during a ceremony held on Sept 16 in Baotou city, in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

In contrast to other sectors, the dairy industry covers the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, with long supply chains, making it difficult to manage.

Under the leadership of Pan Gang, Yili Group has grown into a dairy enterprise with an annual operating income exceeding 100 billion yuan ($14.26 billion), ranking it first in the Asian dairy industry and in the top five producers in the global dairy industry.

Yili is said to push to promote the prosperity of its employees, and last year the value of various incentives issued to them topped 1.2 billion yuan. As of the end of July, Yili has provided a total of 106 billion yuan in financial support to upstream and downstream partners.

At the social level, Yili Group has invested a total of 380 million yuan to help the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic and it has provided free dairy products worth over 92 million yuan to young people across the country. 

With Pan Gang at the helm, Yili achieved peak carbon as early as 2012 and its carbon emissions intensity in 2021 was down by 50.9 percent compared with 2012.

This year, Yili released the Yili Group Zero-Carbon Future Plan and Yili Group Zero-Carbon Future Plan Roadmap – becoming the first company in China's food industry to release dual-carbon goals and roadmaps.