Five more companies on Tuesday bought shares previously owned by the bankrupt Sanlu Group, a Chinese dairy firm at the center of last year's melamine contamination scandal.

The stakes were auctioned in Shijiazhuang, capital of the northern Hebei Province, said sources with the Jiahai Auction Co.,Ltd.

The assets at the auction on Tuesday morning included Sanlu's shares in four Hebei-based companies and a Tianjin company -- the Tianjin Sanlu Ltd., Co, from which the Sanlu held 51 percent of the shares. Auction of the company's shares failed to win bids this past April as the starting prices were too high.

The auction was not open to media.

According to an unnamed auctioneer with Jiahai, most of the buyers were shareholders of these enterprises. But he didn't give details of the buyers.

Two more auctions are expected to be held on May 8 and 12, when more shares, as well as trademarks and 12 patent rights, are to be under the hammer.

Four planned auctions of Sanlu's assets have been held -- the last one being the April auction that failed to win any bids.

Sanlu Group, which was based in Shijiazhuang, 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 (about US$1.5 billion) 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.

(Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2009)