Local beverage supplier Hey Song Corp (黑松) is to open a new plant in Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢) today, which is expected to help boost the company’s revenue by up to NT$2 billion (US$63.81 million) a year after operations begin.
As a result, the company might see its consolidated revenue this year grow by more than 30 percent from last year’s NT$6.2 billion.
“With the inauguration of the third manufacturing plant, the company’s renovation plan has achieved initial success,” company chairman Chang Pin-tang (張斌堂) told a media briefing yesterday.
Hey Song has invested more than NT$2.2 billion in the new plant and related facilities over the past three years.
The plant will manufacture the company’s new carbonated drink, which is targeted at young people, Chang said.
The company introduced new technologies to the plant to enhance production efficiency to 600 bottles per minute, while reducing the use of packing materials by 30 percent, Chang said.
This will improve the plant’s energy efficiency and reduce costs, he added.
Chang said the company aims to grow sales of its core beverage business, improve product safety and develop mobile payment services.
The launch of the plant and a new bottled coffee series in the summer — peak season for the beverage industry — will help boost sales, Chang said.
To increase its product safety efforts, the company plans to enhance product testing at its food safety laboratory, which started operation in 2013, prior to a recent food safety scandal in which Hey Song was said to have unknowingly used restricted substance di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate.
To accelerate its expansion into the mobile payment service sector, Hey Song also plans to increase the number of vending machines which accept both coins and EasyCards, to reach 300 by the end of this year, from the current total of 100.
The company currently operates about 6,500 vending machines nationwide, which mostly accept coins only.
Last year, Hey Song’s net profit jumped by 26.54 percent to NT$394.96 million, or NT$0.98 per share, compared with NT$312.12 million, or NT$0.64 per share, in 2013, according to the company’s stock exchange filing statistics.
Consolidated sales in the first three months of this year totaled NT$1.33 billion, up 4.84 percent from a year earlier.
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