Farm Fresh group managing director and CEO Loi Tuan Ee.
PETALING JAYA: Farm Fresh Bhd
targets to grow its presence within the region to capitalise on growing demand for dairy products.
Group managing director and chief executive officer Loi Tuan Ee said the homegrown dairy company’s aspiration to expand into neighbouring regional markets is “nearing fruition” amid rising demand across the Asia Pacific.
“Our new production facility in San Simon, Central Luzon, the Philippines is on track to commence operations in the third quarter of 2024.
“We plan to introduce a wide variety of Farm Fresh products to the Philippines market including our chilled products, ultra-high temperature products and growing up milk powder, focusing on the Greater Manila market,” he stated in the company’s annual report.
Loi said the many initiatives funded by the proceeds from its initial public offering (IPO) have laid a strong foundation for sustainable growth.
Both category and regional expansion plans are expected to boost Farm Fresh’s bottom line in the coming year.
“We are close to launching our consumer packaged goods ice cream and have laid a roadmap to produce more than 700,000 pieces of ice cream per day.”
Additionally, Loi said Farm Fresh has several new products set to launch soon.
Notably, it will enter two new product categories in the second half of 2024 with butter to be produced at its Taiping plant, aimed at the hotel, restaurant, and cafe (horeca) sectors as well as modern trade, and cultured milk from its Larkin facility.
Loi noted that the commencement of production at the Taiping plant in June 2023 has enhanced the group’s operations by raising chilled milk capacity and cutting logistical costs for supplying chilled milk products to Northern Peninsular Malaysia.
The Taiping plant’s completion has also freed up some capacity at its Larkin plant in Johor. This enables the Larkin facility to focus on expanding exports to Singapore, which has shown robust growth over the last three years.
In Pahang, significant improvements were made to the facility in Muadzam Shah, including the addition of a new clean room for powder milk production, which has a capacity of 500,000 kg per month.
Loi noted that Farm Fresh has installed two new UHT processing lines and a second filling and packaging line for one-litre ambient category products.
“These expansions were driven by increasing demand from commercial, especially the horeca segment, and have served to alleviate the capacity constraints faced in previous years, while providing headroom to increase future production.”
Looking to Australia, Loi said Farm Fresh expects to see stronger revenue and profitability in financial year 2025 in conjunction with the expected softening of farmgate milk prices and the growing volume of exports to the Middle East market.
With the group’s long-term plans on track and ongoing investments to enhance capacities and internal capabilities, he said Farm Fresh is well-positioned for robust growth in the foreseeable future.
For its first quarter ended June 30, 2024, Farm Fresh posted a net profit of RM26mil, quadrupling the RM6.37mil net profit from the same quarter last year.
