Meat and animal feed producer Charoen Pokphand Enterprise (Taiwan) Co Ltd (CP Taiwan, 台灣卜蜂) yesterday said that it is fully prepared to fend off outbreaks of swine diseases in China and Japan.
The company has banned all consumption of pork products at its facilities, and halted plans to further expand its pig farm capacity to shore up biosecurity equipment and protocols at its existing facilities, CP Taiwan chairman Willis Cheng (鄭武樾) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
As the company has built a fully integrated supply chain from animal feed to pork processing, its products have little chance of being contaminated, he said.
It has been a turbulent year for the pig farming industry, as firms were rocked by major epidemics abroad, as well as by the recurrence of diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome and porcine epidemic diarrhea in Taiwan, Cheng said.
As a result, the total number of pigs in the nation has fallen from more than 8 million to about 5.3 million, he added.
Meanwhile, the company’s new artificial intelligence-powered automated animal feed plant is expected to go online in the first quarter of 2020, Cheng said.
The facility would be able to produce 24,000 tonnes of animal feed in its first year and could produce as much as 48,000 tonnes a year, he said.
The company’s share of the local animal feed market would grow from about 15 percent to between 20 and 25 percent after the new plant is fully online, he added.
As part of its diversification efforts, CP Taiwan said that it has built three egg farms at two of its investee companies.
The firm said that it is upbeat on a shift toward frozen and ready-to-eat products amid a shift in the nation’s demographic, and announced plans to tap into e-commerce to expand its 22 percent market share.
CP Taiwan shares yesterday rose as much as 6.05 percent before closing up 5.53 percent as investors sought to tap into the company’s position as a major poultry producer.
Amid rising concerns about swine diseases abroad and a diminishing pork supply, consumers are expected to purchase more poultry, particularly over the Lunar New Year holiday, analysts said.
CP Taiwan reported that revenue last month rose 10 percent month-on-month and 3.77 percent year-on-year to NT$6.73 billion (US$218.03 million).
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