Chicken breeding company aims to take full control of supply chain

Deputy managing director Kanop Sujikara, who is in the second generation of the family business, registered the company in 1995.
“The primary business of my family is running a chicken-breeding farm on 99 rai in Pak Tho district, Ratchaburi, for selling chickens,” said Kanop, 44.
He said the company spent eight to 10 years – until 1981 – with a genetic process to create its own Tanaosree breed, a hybrid between the “Lueang Hang Khao” fighting cock and “Kai Dang” or red chicken, developed from 20 different breed selections.
“Almost 98 per cent of our Tanaosree hybrid will have a black colour in their feathers from a dominant gene of Thai fighting cocks.” 
Kanop added that this hybrid Thai native chicken had the strengths of fighting cocks, particularly disease resistance and the quality of its meat, along with high productivity.
He said Thai fighting cocks, which can produce between 40 and 60 eggs per head per year, could not be commercially enhanced. This is different from broilers, whose cocks can produce between 180 and 200 eggs per head per year while the hens lay 300 or more per head per year.
“Our hybrid chickens can reach 1.6 kilograms in weight after only 90 days,” Kanop said. “We want to help Thailand reduce the import of chicken breeds, and export our own breeds to other markets instead.”
He said the company’s breeding farm was able to produce 100,000 hybrid chickens per week from approximately 40,000 breeders. The chickens have been supplied to 45 contracted farmers in Nakhon Pathom, Kanchanaburi, Ratchaburi, and Suphan Buri.
Kanop said the company set up a new subsidiary two years ago, T Leading Food, as it recognised that the business could not survive by running a chicken farm alone. T Leading Food produces chicken sausages and meatballs.
He said Thai lifestyles and consumption behaviour had changed significantly, from large families to smaller ones, sometimes with only one or two members. As a result, people have less demand for the whole chicken, but prefer small parts of the bird according to their different preferences.
“What we have done is adapt to the new consumption lifestyles of individual consumers. Also in the farming business, we have adjusted our breeding and raising methods to be more natural.”
Also two years ago, the company set up Asian T, a chicken-rice restaurant business. The first two pilot restaurants have been opened at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce and at the food court in the Bangkok Business Center building on Sukhumvit 63 Road (Soi Ekkamai). The company plans to open five more restaurants in Bangkok next year.
“We are studying an appropriate franchise model for our chicken-rice restaurants to provided to individual investors. We expect to start granting rights to franchisees within two years,” he said.
He said the company would invest Bt160 million next year to open a new subsidiary to produce cooked chicken for export, mainly to Japan and Asean, both from commercial broilers and native chickens. The processing facility for cooked chicken will be at Buddhamonthon Sai 7 in Nakhon Pathom province. “We are also looking to expand our upstream farming and slaughtering businesses to neighbouring markets in Asean. The expansion could be through co-investing, selling chicken breeds, and providing technical support and know-how. For the downstream businesses, such as food processing and restaurants, the overseas expansion will be in focus within three to five years,” Kanop said.
Tanaosree Group expects its sales revenue to reach about Bt8 billion this year of which 10-15 per cent will be from export.
“The growth of Tanaosree will be driven by the creation of downstream business segments. Meanwhile, in the upstream, we will rely on insightful understanding of nature in breeding and raising chickens,” he said.