Thailand's Betagro to set up plants in Laos, Cambodia

BANGKOK, November 16 (TNA) - Although several businesses in Thailand are slowing down this year, the country’s leading agro-industry conglomerate Betagro Co., Ltd. plans to establish additional pig farms and food production plants in Laos and Cambodia to cater to the planned implementation of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) scheduled to start at end-2015. Athapol Uraipraiwan, senior vice president of the company, said the firm plans to set up plants in the two Indochinese countries would serve as production bases for exports to the European and Japanese markets which are Betagro’s major customers. Admitting that tariffs reduction remain a major problem for AEC members, Athapol said his company has a plan to set up a sales office in Myanmar and the company would only export its products for sales to that country and still has no plans to establish a factory there. Currently, Betagro Co., Ltd. exports mostly chicken meat to Europe of which half of the total production is exported there while it exports 40 per cent of chicken and pork to Japan. The company is studying on exporting frozen chicken and other food products to Russia after the Moscow government has expressed interest on importing these products more from Thailand. The company is also considering on investing in building more animal feed meal processing plants in the next three years as its current food production plants are operating at near full capacity. Betagro Co., Ltd. projects that it will meet its earnings target at 87 billion baht in 2014 and its business would sustain growth of 10 per cent in 2015. (TNA)