The Aboitiz Food Group expects a challenging year-end performance that may stretch until the first half of 2020, with the current outlook on pork-based products bleak due to the African Swine Flu scare.
Group chief operations officer for foods, feeds and animal nutrition Tristan Aboitiz said the current pork scare might have a dent on sales in the short-term period that could last until next year.
“First half of next year will probably be challenging but will continue to recover in the second half. It’s still early days, many remains to be seen with this situation of ASF,” he said.
He said the impact of the epidemic to the company’s farms would be evident and that sales could slow down.
The public is still skeptical about pork purchases because of the transport bans limiting the movement of both swine carcass and parts and pork-based items.
The company did not notice the repercussion of the epidemic on operations until the last week of September and the entire month of October.
Unit Pilmico Foods Corp. is set to commission a pork-processing plant by the end of November and hopes to weather ominous signs from the swine industry.
Aboitiz conceded the ASF epidemic would impact on the farm business and the animal feeds division.
The group, however, saw a silver lining beyond the Luzon situation with a projected surge in the Mindanao and Visayas feed milling operations.
The farm and food business of Abotiz Equity Ventures include Pilmico, Pilmico Animal Nutrition Corp.and AEV International Pte. Ltd.
The foods division contributed P1 billion to the total revenues of the mother company in the first nine months of 2019, down 31 percent from P1.5 billion on year.