Biotech Farms, Inc. is investing P1.33 billion to expand its annual hogs production capacity by 48 percent to help address the huge shortage of meat products in the country caused by the African Swine Flu on local piggery farms.
The Board of Investments has already approved the grant of tax incentives, including income tax holiday, to Biotech, which piggery farm is located in South Cotabato.
According to the BOI, Biotech Farms will boost annual production by 48 percent to 169,000 hogs (16,900,000 kg) once the expansion project starts commercial operation in April next year.
The expansion includes the construction of a new 2,500 sow-level piggery farm to be located at its existing swine production facility in South Cotabato which has a current capacity of 114,400 hogs (11.44 million kg).
Like its existing piggery farm, the Biotech expansion will also have state-of-the-art facilities with the latest pig production system similar to what is implemented in the United States and Australia to achieve healthy and efficient hog farms.
Once operational, the project will help augment supply and arrest the rising prices of pork in the country.
Data from the Department of Agriculture showed that pork importations grew by an average rate of seven percent per annum while local production grew about 2.5 percent yearly. Additionally, pork demand was 1.25 million metric tons in 2020 with a local supply of 1.12 million MT hence there was a deficit of around 130,000 MT.
To augment local supply, the government has reduced tariffs on imported pork.
Aside from the piggery project, the BOI also approved tax perks for the expansion project of Axelum Resources Corporation, which is investing P270 million for the production agglomerated coconut milk powder and other plant-based infused coconut milk powder products for the exports market.
Axelum’s project is expected to generate nearly 400 jobs once commercial operations start in May 2021.
Its new manufacturing line in Misamis Oriental will be integrated and housed within the existing manufacturing facility. The firm has built a separate building for the huge spray dryer which is the main equipment for the proposed agglomerated coconut milk powder project. Another building was also constructed to house the new boilers for the new manufacturing line.
The project is strategically located in Region X (Northern Mindanao), the second-highest coconut-producing region in 2019, and accounting for 12.4 percent of total national coconut production. The firm targets to export 100 percent of its production with 80 percent going to the Americas, the rest to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Coconut products primarily exported by the Philippines are coconut oil (73 percent or $932.04 million), desiccated coconut (22 percent or $256.75 million), and copra meal (3.42 percent or $60.80 million) in 2020, per data with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The Axelum project is expected to diversify the profile of coco-based exports of the Philippines as the country’s coconut milk powder export reached only $14 million in 2020.
Trade Undersecretary and BOI Managing Head Ceferino Rodolfo said resource-based industries such as agriculture/agribusiness and power sectors remain the most resilient even with the ongoing health crisis.
“The uptrend of project registrations particularly in the agriculture/agribusiness sector will go a long way towards boosting the sector’s output this year,” he said.
The latest project approvals bode well for the industry as agriculture/agribusiness projects reached P364.8 million in the first quarter of 2021 which is up 132 percent from P157.4 million in the same period last year. The sector even recorded a 13 percent growth in projects in 2020 despite the pandemic with P3.84 billion from P3.4 billion the previous year.
Rodolfo cited data from the DA, which showed that the agricultural output marginally declined in 2020 to 1.2 percent. The DA is eyeing a 2.5 percent growth for the sector this year.