A fully vertically integrated operation, like many corporate businesses in China, the feedlot fattens and processes about 40,000 cattle a year.

Taking a tour of the operation with Australian farmers is quite an experience in itself.

Their eyes widen and a puzzled, if not amazed look washes over their faces when they see the production centre; the feedlot itself.

As far as the eye can see there are cattle all tied to metal railings.

Up to 15,000 beef cattle are individually tethered and fed in dozens of sheds with about 360 head in each.

Simmental, Charolais and Angus cattle are used, together with local Chinese and Japanese breeds.

A quick look around you can only see crossbreds.

The area is clean and tidy and the cattle, all bulls, appear calm and obviously accustomed to being handled.

The animals are led out into the sunshine between sheds and tethered there for a few hours during the day and fed several times during the day as part of their 120-day feed ration.

A high intensive operation in anybody's book but with over 4000 families employed and housed on the site, many Chinese hands make light work.

Cattle are sourced from markets across five provinces according to manager, Mr Zhang, who is more than happy to show the tourists around.

Chinese workers at the feedlot smile as they go about their work, sweeping and cleaning the concrete.

The feed to fuel this enormous beef engine is all grown in the surrounding districts.

Corn and a sugar-cane like crop is cut into two to three inch pieces and stored like silage in massive pits on the site.

Minerals are also added to the mix but no hormone growth promotants according to Mr Zhang, who insists the cattle are kept entire to keep their growth rates up.

Cattle enter the lot at 350 kilograms and spend 120 days on the ration, gaining about two kilograms a day from the 25 kilograms fed to them before reaching their target weight of about 600 kilograms.

It is at this point they walk no more than a few hundred metres to the abattoir; a state of the Chinese art facility.

Mr Zhang said 180 cattle are processed every four hours at the works and 40,000 for the year.

An amazing evolution from a company that started with seven cattle in 1986.

Milk production has also become a part of the Fortune Ng Food Company that owns the operation.

In the two dairy feedlots, 5000 cows produce 100,000 tonnes of milk per year.

* Marius Cuming visited the Fucheng feedlot as a guest of Elders.