Food maker Ve Wong Corp (味王) yesterday said it plans to invest more than NT$500 million (US$16.54 million) to expand soy sauce production at its Yunlin plant over the next three to five years to meet growing domestic demand.
“We are going to phase out outdated equipment and raise the monthly production capacity from 200,000 dozen bottles of soy sauce to 300,000 dozen,” Ve Wong president Chen Kung-pin (陳恭平) told reporters after an investors’ conference in Taipei.
The construction is to be carried out in phases and the details still need to be discussed by the board of directors, the firm said.
The firm plans to manufacture more types of soy sauce for small-sized families based on Taiwanese customers’ preferences, Chen said.
“Local customers are more aware of food quality issues, especially after the series of food safety scandals in recent years,” he added.
The expansion project is also seen as part of the firm’s efforts to reduce reliance on its core business of monosodium glutamate (MSG) products, which account for nearly 60 percent of its total sales, while soy sauce only contributes 8 percent.
Ve Wong expects the revenue contribution of its soy sauce products to reach 10 percent after the expansion project is completed.
The company is also working on a project in Chiayi Dapumei Precision Machinery Park (嘉義大埔美精密機械園區) for its food packaging subsidiary, Summit Packing Industrial Co Ltd (森美工業).
Ve Wong earlier this month said it would allocate NT$350 million to build a new production base for Summit Packing to replace its one in Yunlin County.
The new facility, which is expected to start production by the end of next year, is to manufacture eco-friendly packaging solutions, Ve Wong said.
Ve Wong posted sales of NT$543.89 million for last month, a 7.17 percent increase over the NT$507.48 million posted for September last year.
However, cumulative revenue for the first nine months of this year was down 2.07 percent, to NT$4.64 billion, from NT$4.74 billion a year ago.
Despite the decline, the company holds a positive outlook for this year, thanks to a significant improvement in its profitability.
Gross margin in the first half of the year reached 31 percent, up from 25 percent during the same period last year, company data showed.
Ve Wong has not yet released its audited earnings results for last quarter.
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