Singapore-listed Thai Beverage, Thailand's biggest drinks company, has launched Passion 2025, a five-year strategic plan, seeking to entrench ThaiBev as the region's leading food and beverage firm.
Passion 2025 aims to expand the group's business operations through three main approaches: Build, Strengthen and Unlock, said Thapana Sirivadhanabhakdi, the company's president and chief executive.
Build is to create new capabilities and business opportunities on an existing-business basis. Strengthen is to build up the core business to maintain and become a leader in integrated food and beverage business in Asean. Unlock is to leverage ThaiBev's potential to maximise growth capability.
"Under Vision 2020, which covered the six years from 2014 to 2020, we solidified our leadership position across key beverage segments in these markets and also became a leading food and beverage company in Southeast Asia," Mr Thapana said. "Today, the group is ready to take a stronger step."
Currently, ThaiBev is the largest drinks player in Asean and ranks in the Asian top 10 with a market cap of 356.03 billion baht as of Sept 30, 2020. Sales revenue reached 267.35 billion baht in 2019.
Further details about the five-year plan, such as spending requirements, were not disclosed.
The company invested 3.5 billion baht in the first nine months of its fiscal 2020, which ran from Oct 1, 2019 to Sept 30, 2020.
In the previous fiscal year, the company spent 5 billion baht on investment.
Prapakon Thongtheppairot, the company's executive vice-president in charge of spirit products, said the company plans to spend 500 million baht to expand production capacity for Meridian brandy at the Nakhon Pathom factory by 50% from the current 100,000 cases a year by next March.
A further 1 billion baht will be budgeted to expand the same factory's production capacity in the next phase, which is yet to be decided.
The expansion plan is to respond to continuously growing demand for brandy. The market size for brandy in Thailand is estimated at up to 2 million cases a year, with average annual growth of 5%.
"This year is a challenging year," Mr Prapakon said. "However, our efforts to push for premiumisation of brands and our diverse product portfolio, which are suitable for in-home consumption, allow us to maintain our overall segment market share during the time of market turbulence."
Michael Chye, chief of the beer product group, said the first half of 2020 was a challenging period for Sabeco, the brewer of Saigon beer in Vietnam that was acquired by the group in 2017.
According to Mr Chye, Sabeco's business has been hit by many factors, including Vietnam's Decree 100, a toughened law to prevent drink-driving.