Processed pork company gears up for bigger export market
PROCESSED-PORK company C&T Foods expects its sales to nearly double this year to Bt30 million after expanding its market into modern trade and to neighbouring countries.
“We invested Bt5 million early this year to increase our production capacity and launch new products to serve our business expansion to modern trade and export,” the company’s owner and managing director, Chaiyakarn Matan, said in an interview with The Nation recently.
Chaiyakarn, now 44, established C&T Foods Co with registered capital of Bt1 million in 1999. At that time, bakeries that had been buying dried shredded pork from his father-in-law’s business in Phatthalung province were struggling after the 1997 financial crisis, and could not afford the business’ pork products. Many were forced to close.
“Most of bakery shops have to shut down and pick up bakery machine to my father in law to replace money. I saw the opportunity to develop my father-in-law’s business to produce dried shredded pork to sell retail rather |than wholesale,” he said.
Chaiyakarn spent Bt20,000 to open his first shop at what was then Seri Center (now Paradise Park) on Srinakarin Road in Bangkok in 1999, and it enjoyed sales averaging Bt200,000 a month.
“Our sales grew by double digits every year, until in 2006 I opened another shop in Phatthalung. That boosted overall sales to Bt600,000 a month from the two shops in Seri Center and Phatthalung,” he said.
With the initial success of the business in Phatthalung, Chaiyakarn decided to close the shop in Seri Center in 2009 and open another outlet in Phatthalung.
The company also developed more products to serve customers’ demands.
They included pork snacks with seaweed, pork powder sprinkling on rice, and pork sticks. They are sold under the brand Mayo, which means “come often”.
From average sales of Bt200,000 a month in 1999, by 2016 the company was generating average monthly sales Bt1.4 million, or Bt17 million a year.
For 2017, the company targets sales revenue of Bt30 million from expanding its distribution channels into modern trade such as Tops, 7-Eleven and The Mall, and exports to mainland China, Taiwan and Laos, which it started early this year.
“We will expand our exports in the second half of this year by focusing on CLMV countries,” he said, referring to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. “That will boost our export revenue from 5 per cent of total sales this year to 20 per cent within three years,” Chaiyakarn said.
