Operationally excellent companies create an unmatched value proposition of best total cost, the question comes up? What’s in it for them? There is only one answer—growth. Other market leaders might raise prices to exploit their advantage, but such a tactic runs counter to the operational excellence strategy.

A second way that operationally excellent companies fuel growth is by finding different markets to penetrate with their existing assets. Recall how Bounty Fresh Food Inc. created a Chooks-to-Go. Aware that much higher profitability would flow from filling its outlets anytime of the day and at every hour, it launched a campaign to convert the chicken crowd to born-again chicken eaters. The idea involves set up of stand-along outlets selling oven-roasted marinated chicken variants along with the company’s banner processed meat products, roasted pork belly, dressed chicken and other derivative products. What initially started as Bounty Fresh Oven-Roasted Chicken store evolved to the Chooks-to-Go brand.

The buying public firmly associates those formulas with the company’s brand name. So once that formula is defined, perfected and widely known, an enterprise can fire up its poultry processing line. It simply replicates the processes it already performs. Nothing repeats like a success.

Bounty Fresh’s expertise in opening new Chooks-to-Go outlets around the country—close to 1,200 and counting—contributes significantly to its remarkable success.

The story of Bounty Fresh shows in detail the power of operational excellence value. By building a new business on that discipline, Bounty Fresh leaped in a matter of months to market leadership. So efficient was its state-of-the-art and first-class facilities that it prompted fierce competition in the industry.

“The unique processing methods include triple washing of carefully grown chicken [first of its kind] and vacuum-packing immediately to preserve the freshness and flavor,” Bounty Fresh Food Marketing Group Manager Patricia Cheng said.

The first, she said, to offer vacuum-packed chicken in the country. Well-understood and cannily promoted—“masarap kahit walang sauce”—ensuring that buyers grow hungry with anticipation. Bounty Fresh Chicken is the winner of the 2009 Asian Livestock Industry Award.

With its commitment to consistently provide products and services, Bounty Fresh operates a HACCP-approved, “AAA” poultry dressing plant and an “AAA” meat-processing plant, meeting the strict inspection standards of the National Meat Inspection Service.

“The continuous monitoring of the company’s equipment, good manufacturing practices and good housekeeping and product quality guarantees our customers the highest standards of quality and food safety,” Cheng furthered.

Bounty Fresh is the first company in the Philippines that has invested on its own broiler farms at a larger scale—2.5 million birds per batch; the first in Southeast Asia to put up solid wall, mini-vent ventilation system in cool cell houses; and the first in the Philippines to use air-handling unit instead of evaporative coolers to control the temperature inside a commercial broiler hatchery.

According to Cheng, Bounty Fresh is the first company in the Philippines to put up a single-stage commercial broiler hatchery. This state-of-the art technology ensures better hatchery sanitation with controlled ventilation that will in turn produce better chick quality, lower FCR and better broiler performance.  A second single-stage hatchery was recently awarded to Petersime which will expand the company’s capacity by an extra 42 million hatching eggs per year. A third single stage hatchery is planned for next year.

Its main processing plant is one of the few large plants in the country with a capacity of 6,000 birds per hour utilizing the latest technology, which allows the company to supply its customers with safe quality products, along with the flexibility to offer value-added and specialty products to meet customer specifications. For its packaging, Bounty Fresh is the only chicken producer that invested in using the latest tamper-evident packaging materials for packing whole chicken products, as well as cut ups and marinated products.

All its grandparent, parent stock and broilers operate on an all in-all out single-aged meat farm, no multiaged poultry meat farm. At Bounty Fresh, biosecurity involves protecting poultry flocks from disease, ensuring proper measures are established and implemented; and needed facilities are provided in all its processes—starting from grandparent, parent stock to hatchery, feeds production, growing until the live birds are processed. The parent stocks are in controlled environment—farms are isolated with no other poultry farm within a 5-kilometer radius. Training and awareness on how diseases spread and how to control them play an important role in the company’s biosecurity programs and hygiene practices.

Extensive monitoring of flock health status is conducted by the Animal Health Group and the Laboratory Department, as well as strict monitoring of all in-all out system. The Laboratory Department is equipped to provide the following services:  necropsy, serology, bacteriology and mycology, as well as parasitology.

The recognitions from various government agencies, as well as third-party certifying body, attest to the effectiveness of the company’s biosecurity measures, hygiene conditions, as well as the company’s commitment to food safety and quality.

As Bounty Fresh adores the warmth of recognition, they never fail to violate a central rule of market leadership: Dominate your market by improving value year after year.

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OOOPS!

This column extends apologies to Petron and PFI President Eric O. Recto whose name was mistakenly written as Eric O. Alberto of last week’s issue of “Admix.”

Recto in his speech during the Petron Fellowship Night expressed his gratitude especially to those who have been part of the oil company’s journey in providing solutions to some of the country’s social and environmental concerns.

Aside from launching its 2010 Sustainability Report, success stories are also compiled in the Petron coffeetable book that not only captures the journey of Petron Foundation, but also the hopes and dreams of the youth that the oil company is helping fulfill.