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AGRIBUSINESS
WALAILAK KEERATIPIPATPONG
Grain elevators and silos are seen at the 125 rai-complex operated by CPF in Nakhon Ratchasima. |
Charoen Pokphand Foods Plc (CPF) plans to develop its animal-feed operation in Nakhon Ratchasima as a grain terminal in order to benefit from plentiful maize production in the northeastern provinces.
It would double storage capacity of maize to 200,000 tonnes from the region, one of the best areas to grow the crop with more than 800,000 tonnes produced a year, according to Virote Kumpeera, a CPF senior vice-president.
The grain will be dried promptly to assure quality and delivered to one of the company's 11 animal-feed plants that spread into the central provinces, which normally takes several hours to transport, he said.
CPF needs a large amount of maize, soybean meal and rice husks as key ingredients for more than six million tonnes of livestock feed and four million tonnes of aqua feed.
The plant in Nakhon Ratchasima is the company's biggest feed operation with a 1.5-billion-baht investment and capacity to produce 1.2 million tonnes of poultry feed a year. The operation is part of CPF's integrated chicken operation production complex, which has so far used more than eight billion baht in investment capital for business integration from farms to food processing.
According to Mr Virote, the company needs to devote an additional 500 million baht to facilitate development of the grain terminal project. The fresh investment includes adding more dryers to process as many as 4,000 tonnes of maize per day and building new silos to keep 200,000 tonnes of dried maize.
He said that the silo and grain elevators would be constructed with slipform technology, an advanced method of construction where concrete is formed continuously without attached parts, helping prevent moisture from outside.
The same technology will be used to build more animal-feed plants for CPF in Malaysia and Vietnam as well.
The terminal project would be added in the 125-rai compound of CPF in Pak Thong Chai, a district in Nakhon Ratchasima. However, continued expensive maize prices could be a major impediment, Mr Virote said.
He said maize prices had been rising sharply recently, from 9-10 baht a kilogramme last month to 11 baht this past week, following the US market where export prices sold to Asian countries have escalated to 14 baht.
He expected prices from new crops, to be harvested next month, would remain high.
In contrast, current declining meat prices would decrease the new round of livestock farming and affect the animal feed industry in the end.
The Office of Agricultural Economics estimates maize production in Thailand this year at 3.77 million tonnes, a 7.10% rise over the year before, 3.52 million tonnes.
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