Berli Jucker Plc, a consumer product distributor, is looking at spending two billion baht on a production centre for its subsidiary, Thai Glass Industries, the country“s leading glass container manuf…
Berli Jucker Plc, a consumer product distributor, is looking at spending two billion baht on a production centre for its subsidiary, Thai Glass Industries, the country“s leading glass container manufacturer. According to a recent report, in order to support committed expansion plans on the part of major customers, the group is evaluating a third production location for Thai Glass, which would have an initial annual capacity of 150,000 tonnes. David Nicol, president and chief executive of Berli Jucker Plc, said a final decision on the site would be made by the end of this year. “As Thailand“s leading independent supplier of glass containers, we need to have capacity and service that our customers can rely on. At present we are capacity constrained in a number of areas,” Nicol said. Meanwhile, Berli Jucker“s president added that the firm would spend 400 million baht over the next eight months increasing the glass-container manufacturing capability of Thai Glass Industries by 36,000 tonnes per year and rebuilding the subsidiary“s furnaces. The expansion will enable Berli Jucker to increase production to meet growing demand within Thailand“s recovering economy, he said. The expansion and re-building of glass furnaces will be funded from internal resources. Currently, Thai Glass Industries, the country“s leading glass container manufacturer, operates facilities at Bang Phli and Rat Burana with a combined capacity of 1,800 tonnes per day. “During the recent economic downturn, certain clients of the firm particularly in energy drink had not fared well, but others such as the food and beverage business have achieved considerable success,” Nicol said. “The latter group have provided good volumes for our business and the group must in turn ensure that all customers can continue with developing their business free of concerns about container availability.” “The structure of the glass container industry in Thailand is not perfect and I am aware of some surplus capacity in other companies,” he added. “The issue of expansion for us at this time, therefore, does carry some risks but I am confident in our customers and in our service and value proposition.” Phornchai Athikhomkulchai, executive vice-president of Berli Jucker, who is responsible for marketing and customer relationships for the group“s glass business added that the company“s initial expansion would focus on customer specific projects.