Century food group expands to Papua New Guinea

MANILA, Philippines—The Century food group has teamed up with leading global tuna supplier Thai Union and local fishing giant Frabelle to build a $20-million tuna processing plant in Papua New Guinea, lured by the Oceanic country’s rich tuna and deep-sea fisheries resources.

By casting its net wider via a three-way partnership with global leaders in seafood processing and fishing, the Century Pacific Group (CPG) is building overseas capacity especially for its “private label” tuna manufacturing business. Apart from selling its own canned tuna brands like Century, 555, Blue Bay and Fresca, CPG exports to international buyers that, in turn, market canned fish under their own brands.

Christopher Po, president of CPG Holdings Inc., a company controlled by the Po family’s Century Canning Corp., said the new plant in Papua New Guinea would have an initial daily capacity of 120 metric tons. Plans are in place to eventually upgrade to 300 to 350 MT, a capacity that can equal CPG’s own rated capacity in the Philippines.

CPG’s local manufacturing plant in General Santos, Mindanao, typically runs at 70-80 percent of its rated capacity, but whenever margins improve, the factory is operated at full capacity.

Po said in an interview last week that Papua New Guinea was picked for the group’s first offshore manufacturing venture because “that’s the most productive tuna ground in the world.” He added that the new plant, a third of which would be owned by CPG, should be operational early next year.

CPG created the partnership with the Tiu Laurel family’s Frabelle Fishing Corp. and Thai Union Manufacturing Co. Ltd. under a company called Majestic Seafoods Corp., which will own and operate the factory in Papua New Guinea, CPG founder and chairman Ricardo Po Sr. said in a separate interview with the Inquirer.

The patriarch said the venture was hatched a few years back and finalized recently, allowing construction to start. He said the overseas factory should be 50-percent operational by June, which in turn would allow the venture to obtain from Papua New Guinea the licenses needed to bring in the necessary fishing boats.

The CPG founder said his group was expecting good synergies with its two partners, both of them being global leaders in their respective fields.

“The beauty of this partnership is that the three of us have our own strengths,” Po Sr. said.

Frabelle, which is led by businessman Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., is a fully integrated seafood company that has long established tuna processing and fishing operations in Papua New Guinea. It is also part of a local group that acquired the PT Sinar Tuna processing plant in Indonesia.

The Thai Union group is the leading producer and exporter of frozen and canned seafood in Thailand and the biggest tuna canning company in the world currently supplying about a fifth of global demand.

The government of Papua New Guinea requires foreign investors to set up seafood processing plants before allowing them to conduct fishing operations. This is to create new jobs given that tuna processing is a labor-intensive industry.