SMC embarks on P742-B expansion
A decade after its diversification into energy, infrastructure and other new industries, storied conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC) is embarking on its biggest-ever expansion program for both traditional food and beverage concern and new businesses, which is estimated to cost P742 billion through 2020.
As its traditional businesses are folded into a new consumer powerhouse under San Miguel Food & Beverage Co., this unit is expected to complete within the next three years a total of 17 new food production facilities, plus around five to six new breweries.
“Easily, this is the largest capacity expansion program we’ve undertaken in our company’s history,” SMC president Ramon S. Ang and chair Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. said in a report to shareholders.
In a press briefing after the stockholders meeting, Ang said the P742-billion expansion program—equivalent to the estimated cost of SMC’s proposal to build a brand-new airport in Bulacan—started in 2017.
San Miguel Brewery Inc. (SMB) is set to build five or six new breweries—each likely to cost $250 million for an annual capacity of 2 million hectoliters—in various parts of the country, Ang said.
Last year, SMB started construction on the SMB Brewery in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental, in Mindanao. With an initial capacity of 1 million hectoliters, this will be SMB’s first new brewery since the completion of the Davao brewery in 1995.
SMB also intends to put up a new brewery at the boundary of La Union and Pangasinan and another one each in Quezon, Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga, Ang said.
SMB will also increase the capacity of the bottling plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, by another 1 million hectoliters to reach 2 million hectoliters.
The expansion of the food business is likewise seen as “unprecedented and unparalleled” in scale, with a total of 17 new facilities consisting of feed mills, poultry processing plants, processed meats facilities, dairy plants, flour milling and ready-to-eat food plants.
This year, the group has completed and inaugurated a new hotdog manufacturing facility in General Trias, Cavite—effectively doubling its capacity—and two feed mills, one in Mariveles, Bataan, and another in Bulacan province.
The packaging business has acquired three contract wine bottling and packaging companies in Australia: Portavin Holdings Pty. Ltd., Barossa Bottline Services Pty. Ltd. and Best Bottlers Pty. Ltd.
Oil refining and distribution unit Petron Corp. is now reaping the benefits of the upgrading of the Petron Bataan Refinery.
On the power business, total capacity has reached 4,153 megawatts as of March 2018.
