CPF to focus on “brand building”
Over the next five years, Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) will focus more on brand building, distribution, distribution and new food products, according to Adirek Sripratak, president and chief executive of the company.
The company is following the business model of the US giant ConAgra Foods,
one of the world’s largest packaged food companies, engaged in the frozen food
and prepared meat industries with hundreds of brands.
“It s what I would
like CPF to be in the future,” Sripratak says, adding that this would mean
decreasing upstream activities, focusing more on downstream activities as brand
building, distribution and new food products, which are the steps now being
taken by many big food companies.
Over the next five years,
the largest portion of CPF’s annual budget, approximately 4-5 billion baht,
will be shifted to foreign operations, with more offshore investments that would
help lift sales revenue from exports and overseas operations to half of the
total, up from the 35% it is at present.
To promote CP as a global brand,
increasing sales in Europe, CPF, he says, will add one sales office each in
Poland, Portugal and Greece, bringing the number of its sales offices to
21.
