A chocolate maker that was the first foreign-owned company in China to be declared bankrupt has been sold to a state-owned firm, the auction house that handled the sale said.
Shanghai Coline Cocoa Products Co. was sold Friday for 95 million yuan (€12.6 million) to the Anhui Fengyuan Group, a food processing company in the eastern province of Anhui, the Shanghai Auction House and state media said.
Coline's assets include Asia's biggest chocolate factory, capable of an annual output of 75,000 tons. It failed in October with debts of 400 million yuan ($48 million).
Coline had been owned by Hong Kong-based Eureca Corp., said the spokesman, who gave only his family name, Chen.
An attempt to sell it in March attracted no bidders after the opening bid was set at 116 million yuan ($14 million), according to Chen.
Coline was set up in 1993 as a Malaysian-Chinese joint venture and bought by Eureca three years later.
It produced chocolate sold under two brands, Coline and Cemoi.