SAN MIGUEL Brewery Inc. (SMB) wants to further expand to the lucrative, but competitive, US market, even as the company is also eyeing the expansion of all its facilities at home.
SMB Chairman Ramon S. Ang said the company is planning to put up a $150-million (P7.48-billion) brewery in the US West Coast, where there is a large concentration of Filipino immigrants.
The iconic San Miguel beer brand sells nine out of 10 beers at its home soil, but has little success overseas, despite its push to export the brand decades ago.
Ang said the company is set to sign documents this year that will formalize the company’s entry into the US market.
He said he is due to leave for the US in June to sign papers that will secure the land for a 2-million hectoliter plant in Los Angeles.
“The reason to build a brewery in the US is because our volume exported to America can now warrant manufacture in the US,” Ang said.
He said the US brewery will complement the current plans to expand the local capacity, worth $500 million (P24.946 billion) in two years, putting up new brewery and bottling plants around the country while expanding its existing one.
At home, Ang said the company is putting up a brewery in Iloilo and Cagayan de Oro, while the bottling facility in Santa Rosa, Laguna, will be expanded by another 2-million hectoliter capacity.
Ang said expansion is also on the way for San Miguel Brewery’s Bacolod, Davao, Cebu, Polo, Valenzuela brewery and San Fernando bottling plant.
Currently, it has facilities in Bacolod City; San Fernando, Pampanga; Polo, Valenzuela; Mandaue, Cebu; and Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur.
Meanwhile, it has bottling facilities in Santa Rosa, Laguna; Ligao, Bicol; and Cauayan, Isabel.
“All brewery has a utilization close to 95 percent each,” he said.
SMB said its consolidated volumes reached 58.6 million cases for the first quarter of the year, 2 percent higher than the previous year.
Consolidated revenues were up 9 percent to P25.4 billion, while net income ended at P4.5 billion, 12 percent higher than the same period last year.