CJ Intertrade tastes export success
CJ INTERTRADE, a producer and distributor of 3-in-1 and 4-in-1instant-coffee mixes, plans to increase its registered capital from Bt1 million to Bt5 million in order to support capacity expansion after landing deals with major distributors in China and th
Jessadaporn Kaokaen, founder and director of the instant-coffee brand CJ Cup, said her company wanted to upgrade its scale to a medium-sized operation because the size of the business was meaningful in terms of getting an additional credit line from the bank.
The company requires additional lending from Kasikornbank to support the purchase of new machinery as part of its doubling of capacity from 500 tonnes to 1,000 tonnes, she said.
CJ Intertrade recently participated in the “THAIFEX” international trade show in Bangkok in the hope of attracting more clients, and its 4-in-1 instant-coffee-mix products have been welcomed by distributors in 15 countries. The company has signed a tangible contract with a Chinese distributor in the UK, and with another in Hunan, in China.
On average, CJ Intertrade has witnessed annual growth of 15 per cent, but after getting the new deals, her company now expects to expand at a faster rate, with sales revenue this year likely to reach Bt100 million, Jessadaporn said.
She and her partner founded the company in 2011 as a distributor to overseas markets, but she was soon convinced that while this was a satisfactory start, a distributor should one day also have its own product to sell.
She chose to go into the coffee business, as it was an increasingly popular drink the world over, while the market for 3-in-1 instant-coffee mixes was growing by around 30 per cent a year. However, she also believed that her instant coffee should add value in order to represent the fact that the product was from Thailand.
“The fruits of Thailand are well-known overseas, therefore I initiated a formula for instant coffee by adding durian, mangosteen and mango into the coffee – and we called it the 4-in-1instant-coffee mix,” she explained.
In 2012, the company hired an original-equipment manufacturer in Vietnam to produce the 4-in-1 mix under the CJ Cup brand for export to Myanmar and China.
However, the Vietnamese business later copied her product and undercut CJ Cup prices, so she decided to set up a small manufacturing plant of her own in Thailand.
China is the main export target for the brand because of its huge population, plus the fact that Chinese people favour Thai fruits, especially durian. At first, however, sales were well below target because of the newness of her product, which caused Jessadaporn to rethink her marketing strategy.
As mainland Chinese are the highest inbound tourist segment in Thailand, she decided her products should be offered to Chinese visitors as a means of testing the market.
This proved to be a successful move, because after these “tasters” returned home, her company began to receive approaches from many distributors in China about CJ Cup products, while they are also now sold via e-commerce in mainland China.
CJ Intertrade was recently also included in the “SMEs Proactive” project by the Thai Chamber of Commerce, under which – in collaboration with the Commerce Ministry’s International Trade Promotion Department – business-matching was arranged between selected Thai small and medium-sized enterprises and Chinese companies.
