CPRAM Co, a food manufacturer under Charoen Pokphand Group, the country's biggest agribusiness conglomerate, plans to open its new 2-billion-baht bakery factory next year.
The factory is opening a year later than planned because of the Covid-19 outbreaks.
Wisade Wisidwinyoo, the company's managing director, said the factory is on a 10-rai plot in Pinthong Industrial Estate in Chon Buri province, which started construction last year.
It is the company's 16th factory and has a production capacity of 1.2 million items per day.
The new factory would be well-positioned to support growing demand in the company's bakery business, which has been growing by an average of 12% a year, Mr Wisade said.
CPRAM operates 15 food factories nationwide in six provinces.
Six of them produce bakery products, while the remaining nine make ready-to-eat meals.
He said CPRAM plans to expand its bakery production to cover all regions of Thailand, capitalising on the growing demand for bakery products.
This expansion should help increase income in these regions, said Mr Wisade.
"We aim to double our sales in five years," he said.
CPRAM reported sales of 20.4 billion baht last year, with the figure expected to rise to 22.6 billion this year.
Profit is estimated at 528 million baht this year, up from 187 million last year.
To achieve its sales targets, the company wants to focus on expanding its healthy food, functional food and plant-based food in both the domestic and overseas markets by using biotechnology, said Mr Wisade.
"Thais are paying more attention to their health, both in terms of prevention and treatment," he said.
"Diseases are expected to become more complex and difficult to treat, therefore we use biotechnology to develop innovative food for individual customers who have different nutritional demands."
In a related development, the company allocated a budget of 300 million baht to set up a food technology exchange centre at its office in Pathum Thani, allowing the industry to share knowledge, exchange technology, develop food innovations, and brainstorm over how to improve competitiveness from downstream to upstream production.
CPRAM spends 150-200 million baht per year on R&D for food innovation.
