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By Likha C. Cuevas-Miel
Reporter
THE food and beverage arm of JG
Summit Holdings Inc. announced on Friday that it will buy the snack
foods business of General Milling Corp. (GMC), maker of Granny
Goose, Home Pride, General Feeds, and Islands Flour.
In a statement, Universal Robina
Corp. (URC) said it signed a memorandum of agreement, paving the way
for its acquisition of GMC’s snack manufacturing assets and its
trademarks.
GMC is the second largest corn
chips manufacturer in the Philippines and sells corn and wheat-based
snacks like Kornets under the Granny Goose mother brand. This will
complement URC’s business as it is the country’s largest savory
snacks manufacturer and produces Chippy, Piattos, and Nova besides
biscuits, cakes, candies and chocolates under the Jack ‘n’ Jill
mother brand.
“We are looking forward to this
development. The heritage of the Granny Goose brand, as well as
GMC’s diverse snack-lineup, will complement and grow our existing
snack food operations,” Lance Gokongwei, URC president and chief
operating officer, said.
Earlier, Gokongwei said URC
expects its international business to grow by 30 percent in dollar
terms on the back of the strong performance of its Thailand and
Vietnam operations.
He said URC has captured about 30
percent of Thailand’s biscuits and wafer segments, and is among
the top five players in the snack foods and confectionery business.
In addition, its Vietnam business will buoy the company’s overseas
operations on the back of the growth of its C2 tea drink. URC will
soon export C2 to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
With this, the company may
realize its revenue target of $200 million a year by year-end,
Gokongwei said.
In the same statement, URC said
it also raised the prices of most of its products across all
segments to cope with the soaring prices of raw materials like
wheat, soya and coffee. Gokongwei said prices of wheat have more
than doubled in the world market since last year, pushing up
production costs for noodles and biscuits by 10 percent to 15
percent. Prices of soya, which is the raw material for hog and
chicken feeds that URC also manufactures, have also risen rapidly,
he said.
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