Sing Thai Food sets Bt2 million budget for R&D

“We started the business in 1986 when my husband, Chew Lye Ann, who is Singaporean, decided to establish a food business in Thailand with an investment budget Bt4 million, which was from his savings,” Sawat Chaichomphu, managing director of the company, said an interview with The Nation.
Chew Lye Ann had earned a bachelor’s degree in food sciences in Japan, she said. He also had work experience at food firms in Asean counties including Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Eventually he decided to go into business himself, and opened a small food plant in Chiang Rai province in Thailand in 1986.
Chew said: “I had the experience of working in a food [plant] in Singapore owned by my older brother. When my brother decided to close his business, I thought about the opportunity to do business by myself. Then I decided to do business in Thailand.”
The company’s Chiang Rai plant recorded average sales of Bt10 million a year. Then it invested Bt10 million to open a new plant in Nakhon Pathom province in 2005.
Sawat said the company decided to move its plant from Chiang Rai because Nakhon Pathom was closer to its raw-material sources and also had a logistics system that could cater to its customers both domestically and overseas.
Since the relocation, the company has boosted its annual sales to Bt100 million a year. It has more than 400 distributors nationwide, while also exporting its products, especially to Asian countries.
Up to 40 per cent of its total sales are to export markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Laos, Sawat said.
She said the key to the company’s success was its quality products and their variety, with a few new items introduced each year according customers’ demand, and offered at reasonable prices that match its customers’ purchasing power.
Currently, the company has more than 100 products, continually adding to that number by way of its R&D investment budget averaging Bt2 million a year.