Vitarich beefing up capacity

Vitarich Corp. is on the lookout for additional suppliers of farm produce as it guns for an ambitious target of growing its net income by 17 times this year.

Ricardo Manuel Sarmiento, Vitarich president and chief executive, said in a briefing the company was gearing up for expansion in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, to meet the rise in demand for food and animal feed.
Sarmiento said the new animal feed mill in Davao City would go online in July and would double Vitarich’s production capacity.

“We will also double the capacity of our Davao dressing plant from 471,000 birds to 942,000 birds per month,” he said.
In the Visayas, Vitarich is also doubling its animal feed mill capacity in Iloilo, from an average of 93,600 units of 50-kilogram bags monthly to about 187,200 bags monthly.

In Luzon, Vitarich is increasing deliveries from its toll partners, raising production capacity of animal feeds by 67 percent and of aqua feeds by 40 percent.

He said the driver for Vitarich’s growth plans was its “record performance” in 2016, when net income surged by 144 percent to P17.5 million from P7.2 million in 2015.

For the first quarter of 2017, Vitarich posted a 25-percent jump in net income to P47.6 million from P38 million a year ago. —RONNEL W. DOMINGO