KLANG: Integrated poultry firm, Lay Hong Bhd expects to begin building its new factory with an expected capacity of 2,000 tonnes of processed food within the first quarter of next year.
The new plant, which is situated near its existing plant at Tanjong Karang, Selangor, holds a capital expenditure investment of some US$10 million (RM45 million).
"We expect the new plant to contribute significantly to our bottom line for our 2019 financial year, to end March 31, 2019," said its group executive director, Yap Chor How.
"The first phase of the new plant will be completed by the end of 2018 and the remaining phase by the end of 2019," explained Yap.
He noted as well that most of the produce from the existing and ongoing plants are for the local Malaysian market, but with a potential for export markets to Japan, Singapore and the Middle East.
"Right now, the plants are mostly catering to the domestic market here, but we do have plans to export eventually from the productions in both plants," said Yap.
"We are currently monitoring whether we can fully cater to the local market first and if we were to channel the productions to export markets sometime between 2018 to 2020," said Yap.
The group had in May this year formed a joint venture (JV) company, NHF Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (NHFM), with Japan-based food producer NH Foods Ltd, of which it holds a 49 per cent stake.
Yap, alongside NH Foods Ltd's executive officer of Overseas Business Division, Hideki Fujii had earlier launched five variants of Frozen Processed Chicken Products, under the new JV company.
Priced within the range of RM10 to RM13, the products consists of Chicken Karaage, Chiki-Chiki Bone, Amakaraage, Tebamoto Amakaraage and Chicken Menchi Katsu which are all already available in major hypermarkets.
NHFM is currently in distribution discussions to extend these variants petrol station, supermarkets and hypermarkets as well as other convenient stores.