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Published on October 26, 2007

Its partner in the venture will be restaurant and bakery chain the S&P Syndicate. Each will own half of the new company, which will be called Foodhouse and have registered capital of Bt10 million.

PCS is an associate of UK-based OCS Group International, which has operated a business named Foodhouse for 20 years. It currently serves about 150 business clients in the UK. The new joint venture is the OCS Group's first catering business outside of the UK and follows its strategy of rapidly expanding its property support and catering businesses in international markets, particularly those in Asia.

OCS Group managing director Les Setters said the UK firm's international business was growing about 15 per cent annually, compared with growth of only about 10 per cent within the UK.

He said the OCS Group achieved total revenue of £650 million (Bt45.47 billion) last year. Of this, £130 million came from operations outside of the UK.

Jill Lees, the OCS Group's finance director for international operations, said the group planned to increase the profit contribution of global operations from 25-28 per cent now to 45-50 per cent by 2010.

The group has local operations providing property-support services like cleaning and security in more than 20 countries around the world.

The group is currently setting up an associate company in China for cleaning, security and catering services.

PCS (Thailand) director Arnaud Bialecki said his company would next month launch a 50-50 joint venture to provide property support services in Cambodia with local partner Comin Khmere.

Bialecki said Thailand was the largest foreign market for OCS in terms of revenue. Of 63,000 people employed by the group in the UK and around the world, about 23,000 are in Thailand. PCS (Thailand) has about 5,000 local customers, and it contributed revenue of £40 million to the global operation last year. That figure is expected to reach Bt3.1 billion this year.

Bialecki said Foodhouse - the new joint venture - would begin by catering for international schools and private hospitals before expanding to other business clients, such as factories and office buildings.

"Under the joint-venture agreement, we [PCS] will take care of all of the service functions, while S&P Syndicate looks after the supply of food," Bialecki said. "We [Foodhouse] are entering the bidding process to provide a canteen service as well as a catering service to patients in Phya Thai Hospital. The result of the bidding will be known next month."

Bialecki said Foodhouse expected revenue of Bt45

million next year, Bt83 million in 2009 and Bt124 million in 2010.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation