Prantalay's domestic focus
Anurat: New focus follows difficult time in Europe and US.
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Prantalay Marketing, an affiliate of Union Frozen Products, expects to achieve Bt3 billion in sales in the next five years by launching six categories of ready-to-eat seafood products each year.
This is part of a plan to boost its proportion of domestic sales to 30 per cent of the group's total average sales of Bt10 billion a year, Prantalay Marketing chief marketing operations officer Anurat Kokasai said.Prantalay Marketing is a distributor for Union Frozen Products in the domestic market under the Prantalay brand. The company distributes ready-to-cook frozen seafood and chilled ready-to-eat meals through 1,500 distribution channels in Bangkok and nationwide. It reported total sales of Bt600 million last year and expects this to become Bt850 million at the end of this year with Bt1 billion next year. Anurat said its parent company, an expert in producing frozen products and a leader in the export market, wants to increase its domestic market from 8.5 per cent now to 10 per cent next year and up to 30 per cent in the next five years. "We have to focus on the domestic market after facing a difficult period when Europe and the United States used trade barriers such as anti-dumping policies or the Generalised System of Preferences to protect their businesses. These measures have a negative impact on our export market, which now generates a net margin of only 1.5 to 2 per cent, and as a result we have to balance our portfolio by focusing on the domestic market," he said. The parent company will invest up to Bt150 million between next year and 2010 to set up manufacturing facilities to increase production of new products, Anurat said. Yesterday Prantalay introduced eight new flavours of seafood sausage - fresh pepper fish, basil fish, fish-cheese, traditional fish, shrimp, squid, shrimp-cheese and squid-cheese. The company also introduced new 12 ready-to-eat meals. Anurat said the company expects sales from sausage products to reach Bt10 million for the last quarter of this year after the launch of the products, increasing to Bt150 million by the end of next year. At present, 70 per cent of total domestic sales comes from chilled ready-to-eat meals and the rest comes from ready-to-cook frozen seafood products. The company also plans to increase its distribution channels from 1,500 now to 2,000 at the end of this year and 5,000 outlets within the next five years. Half its distribution channels will be in convenience stores. Somluck Srimalee, The Nation
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