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May 24 (NBD) -- Kweichow Moutai Co., Ltd. (600519.SH) held its 2017 annual shareholders' meeting at its headquarters at Chishui, southwest China's Guizhou province Wednesday. 

This was the company's largest-ever shareholders' meeting in terms of the number of participants, with 558 people present. 

Li Baofang appeared at the shareholders' meeting for the first time as chairman of Kweichow Moutai Group and the listed company. 

He revealed that Kweichow Moutai is now able to produce 48,000 tons of original Moutai liquor, and the capacity will be expanded to 50,000 tons next year.

When talking about the reason for the expansion, Wang Chonglin, deputy general manager of Kweichow Moutai, explained the market share of sauce-flavored liquor will rise continually in the future thanks to the product's increased popularity. In 1998, the output of sauce-flavored liquor accounted for less than one thousandth, but now the ratio has surpassed 3.9 percent. 

In recent years, Kweichow Moutai reported a substantial increase in sales of sauce-flavored liquor. Last year, the distillery pocketed revenue of about 52.4 billion yuan (8.2 billion U.S. dollars) from original Moutai liquor, (also known as "National Liquor") and around 5.8 billion yuan (904.8 million U.S. dollars) from variations like Moutai Prince Chiew. 

Next, the distillery will focus on transforming its derivative products into a growth and revenue driver as strong as orignal Moutai liquor like Moutai Flying Fairy.  

The company aims to increase the production capacity of Moutai variations to around 55,000 tons over the next three years, Li Baofang said. A Moutai investor told NBD he was informed that Kweichow Moutai set to reap 10 billion yuan (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) in sales of Moutai variation this year, a sharp rise from the previous target of 8 billion yuan (1.3 billion U.S. dollars). 

At the 2017 results conference held the day before the shareholders' meeting, Kweichow Moutai estimated that its revenue for 2018 will experience an increase of about 15 percent to approximately 67.0 billion yuan (10.5 billion U.S. dollars) from 58.2 billion yuan (9.1 billion U.S. dollars) last year. 

In other news, the liquor maker underscored that it has no price hike plan this year.  

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn