ATN shifts business focus

ATN’s quarry in Montalban, Rizal

Betting big on a sustained infrastructure boom in the Philippines, holding company ATN Holdings Inc. is transforming itself into a construction supply-driven enterprise that will produce the rock aggregates and precast concrete required by big-ticket infrastructure builders.

In an interview with the Inquirer, ATN chair Arsenio Ng said the company’s budding construction supply business could eventually account for 80 percent of ATN’s total business.

At present, as a holding company, ATN’s income comes mainly from the selling and leasing of real estate assets, health care and medical services, and stock investments.

ATN started producing rock aggregates from its 256-hectare property in Montalban, Rizal province, and in 10 months, it expects to complete a precast facility that will produce concrete slabs. This will allow the company to produce higher-margin construction materials apart from selling crushed rocks.

Ng estimated that the Montalban property had at least 400 million tons of quality rock reserves, which would be good for the production of aggregates for at least 50 years more.

The group has been exploring this property for rock aggregates in the last two years, after completing over 90 government permits and licenses needed to do so.

Last week, ATN signed a memorandum of understanding with Metro Pacific Tollways Corp. (MPTC) to commit “priority supply” of 250,000 cubic meters of rock aggregates to five of the latter’s infrastructure projects, namely: Harbor Link, Cavite Laguna Expressway, LRT-1 Cavite Extension, NLEX-SLEX Connector Road and NLEX expansion project.

“They made a survey of our available stockpile and they found out that we have half a million [cubic meters] ready to support construction requirements,” Ng said.

For its part, ATN presented to MPTC its fully engineered crushing plant that can produce 500 tons of aggregates per hour. In the future, it plans to set up another crushing plant that can produce 800 tons of aggregates per hour alongside its precast housing plant—a venture with China Machinery Engineering Corp. (CMEC) and Broad Homes Industrial International Co.—and several batching plants.

Apart from the proximity to Metro Manila of ATN’s aggregates production site, Ng said the group was employing the newest equipment that could efficiently crush rocks in various sizes.

ATN’s P2.5-billion 60,000-cubic meter precast concrete plant venture with CMEC and Broad Homes aims to supply the needs of mass housing.

ATN also intends to use its own production of rock aggregates to produce higher-margin products.

Ng is optimistic that President Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program will create a favorable momentum for infrastructure-building in the next 15 to 20 years.