The fourth and final planned auction of assets of Sanlu Group, the bankrupt Chinese dairy company at the center of the melamine contamination scandal, failed on Monday.

The assets at Monday's auction included the group's shares in 11 dairy companies. Sanlu holds a controlling stake in seven of these companies.

Four bidders attended the auction, but none of them took the bid after the auctioneer announced the prices of the Sanlu assets, including 51 million yuan (US$7.46 million) for 70 percent of shares in the Tangshan Kangsheng Dairy Company.

Yuan Guoliang, chairman of the Hebei Jiahai Auction Co. Ltd., said it was a surprise that the auction failed. However, he said the reason might be that the prices were higher than the bidders had anticipated.

Yuan said the auction company would work with the bankruptcy administrator on how to deal with the remaining assets of Sanlu Group.

Representatives of the four bidding companies left immediately after the auction, without taking questions from the media.

Sanlu Group, which was based in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, had been China's leading seller of milk powder for 15 years until the melamine adulteration scandal broke in September last year. The group's revenue hit 10 billion yuan in 2007.

The company's tainted baby milk powder was found to have caused the deaths of at least six children and sickened more than 300,000others.

Sanyuan Group, headquartered in Beijing, successfully bid 616.5 million yuan to buy Sanlu's core assets in the first auction on March 4.

(Xinhua News Agency April 13, 2009)