Conglomerate San Miguel Corp. has embarked on its largest expansion program in history with the construction of 18 manufacturing facilities across the food and beer businesses.
San Miguel said the 18 new facilities slated for completion over the next three years formed part of the group’s P742-billion capital expenditure plan from 2017 to 2020.
The expansion plans will enable the company to meet the increased demand from growing customer base.
“Easily this is the largest capacity expansion we’ve undertaken in our company’s history,” San Miguel president and chief operating officer Ramon Ang said Thursday in a stockholders’ meeting.
San Miguel last year started the construction of a brewery plant in Misamis Oriental province with an initial capacity of 1 million hectoliters. It is also expanding the capacity of its bottling business in Sta. Rosa, Laguna province.
The conglomerate is constructing five to six new brewery facilities across the country to reduce logistics cost.
For the food business, San Miguel is building new feed mills, poultry processing plants, processed meat facilities, dairy plants, flour mills and factories producing ready-to-eat products.
San Miguel early this year inaugurated a new hotdog manufacturing facility in General Trias, Cavite province that will double the current capacity. It also completed two feed mills in Bataan and Bulacan provinces.
Ang said the group would start manufacturing Spam in the Philippines for export to Southeast Asia and the domestic market.
He said unit San Miguel Pure Foods had a license agreement with Hormel to produce Spam for export to the region.
Ang said the expansion plans would support the growth of the domestic economy and create jobs across the country.
The massive expansion of the food and beer businesses augurs well with the conglomerate’s move to consolidate the units under San Miguel Food and Beverage Inc.
The group’s packaging business is further expanding operations in the region with the acquisition of three companies in Australia, namely Portavin Holdings Pty Ltd., Barossa Bottling Services Pty. Ltd. and Best Bottlers Pty. Ltd.
The conglomerate over the last 10 years implemented a major diversification plan that enabled it to invest in high-growth areas like power generation, infrastructure, and oil refinery but never lost sight of its older business as the source of growth.
“Over the years, we’ve worked to continuously strengthen not just our leadership in the markets we’re in but also our capability to meet the changing needs of a growing customer base. Our ability to meet the demand for our products is key to our long-term competitiveness,” Ang said.
