Oishi plant may close 3-6 months if water flows in

“Costing more than Bt4 billion and occupying 60 rai of land, the plant in Nava Nakorn is the heart of Oishi,” president Matthew Kichodhan said yesterday after the facility was temporarily shut down on Monday.
“It can produce 30 million PET [polyethylene-terephthalate plastic] bottles for Oishi green
tea a month and 34 million units a month for UHT [ultra-high-temperature processing]. The plant also includes the central kitchen, which serves more than 120 Oishi Japanese restaurants throughout the country,” he said.
About 1,200 of Oishi’s 6,500 employees work at the plant, of whom 200-300 are part-time.
“In the worst scenario, we expect our sales to plunge from Bt11 billion to between Bt9 billion and Bt9.5 billion, as two-thirds of our production has been hit directly by the massive flood,”
he said.
The plant has 125,000 cases of green tea in inventory, enough to supply the market for 30 days, and 11-14 days of food to supply Oishi’s restaurants.
Oishi’s other factory in Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate can make only 15 million plastic bottles of green tea per month.
All sauce ingredients have been moved from Nava Nakorn to Amata Nakorn, while all computer-control equipment have also been moved up to the second floor of the Nava Nakorn factory.

Prevention priority
“As a preventive measure, which is our key priority, we have built 3-metre-high earthen barriers more than a kilometre around our plant. About 120,000 sandbags and 50 pumps have been used to prevent the water from flowing into our facility,” Kichodhan said.
The plant has 111 male workers on standby 24 hours a day. The flood is now 70 centimetres high in front of the plant and up to a metre high behind it.
“If the flood water has not entered our building, the plant is expected to resume normal operations within a week,” he said.
“We have learned a key lesson from the flooding crisis. We need to stay strong and keep safety first for our employees. We also need to plan ahead to mitigate any risk.”
Oishi had targeted Bt1.8 billion in sales of its green tea and other beverages and Bt1.2 billion from its Japanese restaurants this quarter, but the calamity will cause Bt500 million to Bt1 billion of sales to disappear this quarter.
The Nava Nakorn plant’s Bt3.4-billion insurance policy covers both damage to facilities, including corporate and movable assets, caused by floods and loss of income during the flooding period, Kichodhan said.