Central Azucarera de San Antonio (CASA), a sugar mill owned by the Chan family of Iloilo, is planning to a P558.5-million public offering of shares although these will not be listed at the stock exchange.
Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show, CASA is controlled by the siblings of celebrity Jose Mari Chan who is also in the sugar business.
CASA is planning to offer a total of 277,500 shares, with a par value of P1,000 per share, consisting of 214,571 primary shares and 62,929 secondary shares at an offer price of P2.012.52 apiece.
The shares will be sold exclusively by issue manager and underwriter SB Capital Investment Corporation and may be traded over the counter also through SB Capital after the offering.
Net proceeds from the primary offering amounting to P422.72 million will be used to fund the upgrading of the company's cogeneration facility (P115 million), motor pool (P85.8 million), and sugar factory (P44 million), as well as for farm mechanization (P88.5 million) and land acquisition (P88.5 million).
CASA’s largest shareholders include Maria Luisa C. Chan (28.39 percent), Antonio Stephan C. Chan (26.09 percent), Antonio Steven L. Chan (19.54 percent), Maria Teresa L. Chan (11.94 percent), Lily Zenaida L. Chan (8.06 percent), and Maria Antonietta L. Chang (5 percent).
The company was born from the success of Central Azucarera de Bais, Inc. (CAB) which is also majority owned by the Chan family. CAB is one of the oldest sugar mills in the Philippines having been established in 1918 by Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas, known more popularly as ‘Tabacalera’.
In 1979, Antonio Chan, then a prominent sugar trader, acquired CAB from the Tabacalera group signaling his family’s initial foray into sugar manufacturing Last 2020, CAB completed a factory-wide modernization project modeled almost identically after CASA’s technological success.
CASA’s primary business is sugar milling with its facilities having a maximum milling capacity of 8,000 tons of cane per day. Its main products are raw sugar and its by-products, sugarcane molasses and biomass co-generation.
On March 31, 2011, the Department of Energy approved the registration of the Company as a Renewable Energy Developer of Biomass Energy Resources covered by Biomass Renewable Energy Operating Contract no. 2011-03-021 that took effect on the same date.
The Company’s co-generation plant started operations last December 23, 2007 with initial installed generation capacity of 15MW.
The Company has initiated the expansion of its co-generation facilities with the contemplated 8MW increase in installed generation capacity.
The Company expects some delays in the completion of the co-generation plant expansion and exportation of generated electricity due to delays in the development of the expansion facilities due to restrictions in entry of foreign thermal and electrical contractors. It also expects delays in the completion of required transmission lines by the NGCP.