The Philippines: San Miguel Food and Beverage allocates P41 bln for expansion of food and beer businesses

San Miguel Food and Beverage Inc. (SMFB) said it is allocating P41 billion for the expansion of its food and beer businesses over the next three years, the Business Mirror reported on October 30.

Officials of the food and beverage businesses carved out of the conglomerate San Miguel Corp. said the company will invest up to P11 billion to add more breweries as their plants are already at 95-percent capacity of its 18.8 million hectolitres.

San Miguel Brewery Inc. is constructing two breweries—one in Northern Mindanao and another in Laguna—to produce an additional 2 million hectolitres of beverage products, mostly beer.

It should be on stream by late next year or early 2020.

For the firm’s various food businesses, the company’s chief operating officer Francisco Alejo III said SMFB is allotting about P10 billion a year, or a total of P30 billion up to 2020, also for capacity expansion.

Alejo said they are putting up five new feed mills with two expected to be operational this year while the other three will be completed in 2019.

He said capacity utilization has already reached about 95 percent while there continues to be a lot of opportunity for growth and for putting up more plants.

SMFB will also be putting up more poultry dressing facilities over the next two years.

“This will take care of increasing per capita consumption of chicken in the Philippines,” Alejo said.

The firm will also be expanding the capacities of Monterey’s slaughter houses and its flour milling capacity, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao.

Alejo said they also intend to increase the capacity of its processed meat plants by 50 percent next year after a recent increase—also by 50 percent—to allow SMFB to sell ready-to-eat items not only to airlines, but also to convenience stores.

San Miguel consolidated its food and beverage businesses by transferring all its equity in Ginebra San Miguel Inc. and San Miguel Brewery Inc. to San Miguel Pure Foods Co. in exchange for shares. It then renamed Pure Foods into its current name.

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