August 31, 2010

 

Thai livestock sector's investments expected to grow

The bright outlook for Thailand's food exports has drawn substantial new investments in the livestock industry, with meat products expansion driving the country closer to becoming a major world food supplier.

 

In the first six months of 2010, Thailand's food exports grew a robust 15.9% on-year to 411.63 billion baht (US$13.15 billion). Estimates for the entire year are 830.16 billion baht (US$26.52), which would be a 10% increase from 2009.

 

Favourable prospects have raised the confidence of investors looking to expand as applications seeking incentives from the Board of Investment (BoI) have increased.

 

The BoI reported that 17 livestock and aquatic breeding and processing projects received investment promotion during the first seven months this year. The projects, ranging from farms to processing units, have a combined investment value of more than 4.2 billion baht (US$0.13 billion).

 

Prominent projects include a 1.03-billion-baht (US$0.033-billion) ready-to-eat meal venture from Songkla Canning Plc, and poultry and animal feed production expansion programmes by two major chicken producers and exporters, Betagro Group and GFPT Plc.

 

A Betagro subsidiary, B Foods Products International, received incentives for its broiler chicken farming site in Nakhon Ratchasima. The 528-million-baht (US$16.87 million) project aims to farm 17.36 million chicks a year to feed its production plants in the area.

 

Krung Thai Farm Co received investment perks for three projects in chicken farming and animal feed with a combined investment capital of 845 million baht (US$26.99 million).

 

Sukhum Panyakorn, an investment analyst for GFPT, said the Krung Thai projects, to be completed by 2012, would add 150,000 chicks a day to the GFPT production lines, increasing its capacity to 250,000 chickens per day.

 

The expansion aims to support GFPT Nichirei (Thailand), a 1.56-billion-baht (US$0.050 billion) joint venture between GFPT and Japan's leading food company, Nichirei Food Inc, to make frozen and processed chicken for export.

 

The venture started operations on a small scale earlier this year and will become fully operational in December with the capacity to produce 30,000 tonnes of cooked products for export to Japan.

 

Mr Sukhum said the group was also increasing animal feed capacity by establishing a new feed plant in Chon Buri with the capacity to produce up to 500,000 tonnes, increasing its animal feed production to one million tonnes a year.

 

The expansion is intended to cash in on the increased import quota the European Union allocated to Thailand this year of 160,000 tonnes. The move helped increase Thailand's chicken exports to the EU to 93,000 tonnes in the first half this year, a 7.5% rise on-year.