CNPF expands beyond tuna

After building a business empire out of seafood canning, the Po family-led Century Pacific Food Inc. (CNPF) is becoming less of a tuna producer and more of a diversified food group with fast-growing meat, milk and coconut businesses.

But CNPF will continue to invest in its traditional business.

A new tuna processing plant with an additional capacity of 100 metric tons daily will be switched on in General Santos by the fourth quarter.

The plant will account for the bulk of the company’s P2 billion in capital spending this year.

Through a mix of acquisitions and organic expansion, the company is doubling its business, as well as its net profits, every five to seven years. Each year, it aims to grow its net profit by around 10-15 percent, or twice as fast as the country’s gross domestic product growth.

This year, CNPF executive chair Christoper Po said a double-digit growth in net profit from last year’s P2.8 billion remained the goal of management. This suggests that growth will pick up pace for the rest of the year after an 8-percent year-on-year growth in bottom line to P793 million in the first quarter.

“Catching has been good this year, so tuna prices have come down vis-a-vis this time last year. Peso is also stronger so that actually helps us in the sense that there was a lot of pressure to manage costs or even price increases last year, when everybody was talking about (rising) inflation. That has slightly reversed and this is actually a welcome development that tuna prices have softened,” Po told reporters after the company’s stockholders’ meeting on Monday.

But Po noted that 40-year-old CNPF was becoming “less and less of a tuna company.”

These days, the tuna and sardine categories have become mature businesses, whereas the meat and milk businesses are growing faster, Po noted.

In 2018, the share of the branded seafood business to total revenues went down to 32 percent of P37.9 billion worth of revenues.

Milk, which accounted for 17 percent of the business last year, will end this year with a share of over 20 percent, he added.

Since investing in the coconut business in 2015, this new business now accounts for 10 percent of total.

With CNPF’s diversification, vulnerability to volatile tuna prices—which in turn are influenced by unpredictable tuna harvests—is reduced.