Malee takes short-term hit for better future

The company is confident that its business performance will be back on track for planned growth as outlined in the company’s long-term strategy, the company’s chief operating officer Roongchat Boonyarat said on Monday.
She added that there are two main reasons for the second quarter sales of Bt1.37 billion, a decrease of 21 per cent year-over year. The first reason was a decline in domestic sales due to a slowdown in domestic spending that affected the overall market and also issues with the fruit juice market (which has suffered a 9.4 per cent decline, according to Nielsen). Malee also managed its inventory level to prepare for a new packaging launch scheduled for the third quarter of this year, plus there was a shortage of raw materials for canned fruit production following unseasonably low crop yields, said Roongchat.
The second reason for the decrease was lower sales for Malee’s contract manufacturing business (CMG) after the company implemented new preventive measures to control the quality of coconut water throughout the supply chain to ensure the products do not face any quality issues in the future. These new measures enhance traceability, increasing the company’s ability to track raw materials back to the source, said Roongchat.
Malee is also accelerating collaboration with their sources of coconut water, with stricter quality checks that will be in place by the end of 2017 to ensure a higher quality of coconut water.
“Once these changes are complete, we expect that our coconut water business situation will return to normal by next year”, said the COO.