SET-listed Thai Union Group, a global seafood company, wants to grow its revenues by at least 5% this year while maintaining an average gross margin of 20% through 2025.
Thiraphong Chansiri, chief executive of Thai Union, said this year's growth will be driven largely by canned, frozen and chilled seafood, pet food and pet care and value-added products, which are the company's core businesses.
An important growth area for the group is pet care, with sales improving by 17.9% last year as people adopted more animals during the pandemic and spent more time at home with their pets.
Pet care presents a significant opportunity for future growth and last year Thai Union launched i-Tail Corporation, which manages the company's entire pet-related operations, he said.
The business is exploring innovative products to enhance the health and longevity of pets around the world, said Mr Thiraphong.
Innovation is a significant growth engine for Thai Union and the company is aggressively pursuing new value-enhancing businesses at its Global Innovation Center and ingredient supply subsidiaries, he said.
Last year the group introduced a number of new innovative products including marine ingredients such as UniQDHA and UniQBONE as well as supplements brand ZEAvita with a focus on collagen, calcium and fish oil products. To support the expansion and growth of this business unit, Thai Union is building a new protein hydrolysates and collagen peptide plant in Samut Sakhon.
Thai Union is also a founding member of SPACE-F, the first food tech incubator/accelerator programme in Thailand, and continues to be heavily involved in this segment.
The company is engaged with food-tech startups both in Thailand and globally, said Mr Thiraphong.
In 2021 Thai Union reported sales growth of 6.5% to 141 billion baht year-on-year, pushing net profit up by 28.3% to 8 billion.
The performance was driven by a rebound in the frozen and chilled seafood business following the reopening of food service, restaurants and hotels in the US as Covid-19 restrictions eased, as well as stronger pet care and value-added sales, he said.
"This year the company expects revenue will increase at least 5%. We're preparing a new investment budget of 6 billion baht," said Mr Thiraphong.
