The frozen food market in the United States is estimated at 35 trillion won ($30.9 billion), excluding ice cream. After starting sales of frozen dumplings in the United States in 2009, CJ now operates five factories in the country. With the addition of Schwan’s factories, this figure will jump to 22. The U.S. company also owns 10 distribution centers, which means CJ will be get access to the complete existing infrastructure from manufacturing, distribution to sales thanks to this single deal. CJ’s Bibigo dumplings have been selling well in the U.S. market, but its distribution channels are limited to a few major retailers like Costco. Another advantage of the acquisition is Schwan’s know-how in the American frozen food market. CJ CheilJedang has openly cited promoting Korean food worldwide as a corporate mission in the last few years, and one way they’ve been doing that is by slightly modifying recipes to suit foreign markets. Schwan’s experience will help it develop new recipes based on pizzas, pies and appetizers with a Korean twist. “The U.S. frozen food market is showing slow growth, but the market for Asian food is steadily expanding at a speed of four to five percent [every year],” said CJ. “We might be able to expand K-food to neighboring countries in Canada and Mexico as well.”