Mama maker plans plants in Bhutan, Ghana at cost of Bt500m

The expansion is in line with the company’s strategy to focus on penetrating overseas markets, given that the domestic market is growing by only 3 per cent a year, he said.

“We also have a noodle factory in Bangladesh serving the market there, which has a huge population of more than 160 million. The Bangladesh factory began operating this month,” he said.

For its home country, the company has no plan to raise the prices of its Mama products even though its faces higher production costs from higher wages and the wildly fluctuating prices of ingredients. 

“As the domestic instant-noodle market has reached maturity, our corporate strategy is to focus on controlling additional costs and making a profit,” Pipat said. “We will also invest Bt950 million in Thailand this year, of which Bt380 million will be for adding five machines to expand the capacity of instant-noodle packs at our Sri Racha plant and Bt135 million for adding one cup-noodle machine and Bt75 million for one wafer machine at the Rayong factory.” 

Thai President Foods expects its domestic sales to increase by 10 per cent to Bt10.4 billion this year after rising 7 per cent last year. The company netted Bt1.2 billion profit on Bt9.7 billion in sales last year. 

This year the company expects Bt288 million in sales from Cambodia, Bt593 million from Myanmar and Bt106 million from Bangladesh.