Silver Fern Farms had been working ''quite closely'' with Shanghai Maling over recent months to develop a number of prototypes.
While not all would make it through, a series of products would be going into the Chinese market and that was exciting, Mr Hewett said.
Last month, Silver Fern Farms finally received the regulatory approval it needed for the joint venture to go ahead. Shanghai Maling injected $261million and took a 50% share.
Shanghai Maling president Wei Ping Shen and head of investment Henry Gu were at Silver Fern Farms' head office in Dunedin yesterday.
Discussions included the likely need for a bigger, more dedicated plant for value-added, as it was likely the company would outgrow where it currently did its retail packaging in the old food technology part of Silver Fern Farms' Takapau plant, Mr Hewett said.
Silver Fern Farms had access for some but not all, value-added products to put into China, and there were aspirations to retrofit that access as quickly as possible, he said.
Speaking through Mr Gu, Mr Shen said everything was on track for the first business day of the new company in January.
The purpose of the trip to New Zealand included talking with the SFF board and management team about the future strategic plan, the China market, and discussing value-add products and some new products.
Mr Hewett said it was ''business as usual'' in the short-term, with the same agents ''coming up the driveway'' procuring livestock, but there would be changes over time, such as contracts and feedback to farmers.
There was a focus on migrating product out of commodity product and putting it into value-added and chilled, which meant better returns back to the company and its shareholders, he said.
Mr Shen said farmer shareholders were very important to the joint venture and it relied on their support. Some new systems and contracts would be made to ''share more'' with farmers, he said.
The company would be governed by a 10-person board comprising five directors from Shanghai Maling, three farmer directors and two independent directors.
Mr Hewett said Silver Fern Farms selected its farmer directors at a board meeting last week. Shanghai Maling had interviewed a number of independent directors and was making its final decision. A joint announcement on the new board would not be ''too far away''.