COFCO Corporation, also known as COFCO Group, is a Chinese state-owned agribusiness and food conglomerate headquartered in Beijing. Its current visual identity dates to October 18, 2006, when the company replaced a simple green logo that had been in use for 13 years with a colorful, three-dimensional mark built around the concepts of “heaven, earth, people and sunlight.”[1][2]
Design and History
The current COFCO logo was designed by Enterprise IG, a brand consultancy, and was officially launched at a media conference titled “New Logo, New Energy and New COFCO.”[1][2] The mark is a three-dimensional hexagon shaped to resemble a solar flare, composed of three hexagon-like forms in blue, orange, green and brown.[1][3]
At the launch, COFCO chairman Ning Gaoning said the change was intended to convey the company’s new enterprise philosophy “Nature Shapes Us” and to build a “Boundless COFCO” corporate culture.[1] The logo change was described as a preface to a broader corporate restructuring, with COFCO planning to shift from a foreign trade-driven business model to a customer and market-oriented management system.[1]
In 2011, the COFCO logo received the Corporate Logo Prize at the 2011 Beijing International Design Week and the 1st Session of the Beijing International Design Triennial, an event organized by China’s Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture, China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and the Beijing Municipal Government.[4]
Meaning and Symbolism
According to COFCO’s official description, the logo combines “heaven, earth and life,” illustrating the company’s philosophy of following the rules of nature to create harmony between mankind and nature.[1] The icon’s upper portion represents the sky, symbolizing a broader future and room for growth; the lower portion represents fertile land; and the middle resembles early spring leaves or people holding hands, representing life and humanity.[5]
COFCO’s official English-language description states that the logo “consists of leaves in spring and sunshine, meaning great growth potentials of the company and human being.”[4] The four colors used in the mark are described as “dream blue,” “joy orange,” “youth green” and “promise brown.”[5]
Contemporary reporting at the time of the launch noted that the new logo was intended to emphasize COFCO’s shift toward bio-energy and environmental industries, part of the company’s broader strategy to position itself as a business increasingly connected to natural resources.[3][6]
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