VITARICH Corp., once the country’s top livestock firm, said it is on track to meet its targets this year, despite the company posting a wider net loss for the first quarter of the year.
The company said it had a net loss of P62.55 million, deeper than last year’s net loss of P42.01 million.
Vitarich, however, made an operating income, or the gains from the firm’s normal operations, of P21.46 million, from last year’s loss of P47.98 million and P123.01 million operating loss for the full year of 2014.
“Our first-quarter results show that we are on track [to hit our target]. We’ve seen a higher feed volume that resulted from higher demands, and we owe it in part to better innovations within the company and its products,” Vitarich COO and Executive President Ricardo Manuel Sarmiento said.
He declined to say when the company would be profitable.
He said the company has had better buying power of its raw materials, increased efficiency of its chickens allowing it to stay competitive with the industry, increase in performance and volume standards, better competitiveness due to cost efficiency, as well as improved inventory management.
“We believe that 2015 is the turning point for Vitarich. We also believe that this turnaround came because we have created and applied innovations to how we run the business,” Sarmiento said.
The company registered a 12-percent increase in the consolidated sale of goods to P885.26 million for the period, from P613.4 million last year due to the higher volume of sales of animal and aqua feeds.
“We’ve had an improved feeding system in the dairy area. We’ve also looked into helping our farmers in all aspects of production, such as providing the concentrate, analyzing inputs, lab analysis, and providing seminars on how to properly feed and take care of the livestock,” Sarmiento added.
“These measures have become so effective that from a standard production of 12 liters of milk a day, we’re now enjoying a 50-percent increase from our previous output.” Established by brothers Feliciano, Lorenzo and Pablo Sarmiento in 1950, Vitarich has since been a major link in the Philippines’s farm-to-consumer supply chain.