*BUSINESS TALK

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*By , Dr. William Co, PCCI chairman

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Dairy farming is an industry that has huge potential to grow and could help address food security and provide livelihood to many Filipinos. Imagine, people consume milk everyday yet 99 percent of our supply is imported. In 2021, the country’s milk production was only 26,300 MT but government foresees it to go up this year driven by an increase in dairy animals and active implementation of the government’s dairy development projects. Dairying wasn’t really an attractive industry for farmer households in the beginning since we have a tropical climate that may not be suitable for this kind of farming compared to other more temperate regions. But through the years, it has gained interest from farmers and even investors as a lucrative venture. In fact, the government has developed the Philippine Dairy Roadmap 2022-2025 which hopefully paves the way for the development and improved production of milk and milk products in the country. We hope that this roadmap will be well implemented to promote the dairy industry to tract more investments. Just recently, the Department of Agriculture (DA) through its Agriculture and Fisheries Industrialization & Development Program (DA-AIDPro) approached PCCI and introduced a Qatari company named Baladna that will be investing in the Philippines to establish a US$500 million integrated and state-of-the-art dairy facility in the country. Baladna Qatar is the largest locally-owned food and dairy producer, supplying over 95 percent of the country’s fresh dairy products.  The firm owns more than 24,000 Holstein cows in its 2.6 million square-meter facility with 40 state-of-the-art barns and could produce up to 450 tons of fresh milk and juice products on a daily basis. The project is so huge that it requires a minimum of 5,000 hectares of land for forage, dairy farm, and processing facilities. Approximately, this modern facility could be set up in 18 months granting all pertinent requirements are met and complied with and a local partner, according to the company’s overseas expansion head, Aidan Tynan. He explained that the facility is designed to be climate-independent using world-class management systems and will create 2,000 jobs in its first phase. What is even more interesting is that 100 percent of dairy production will be for domestic consumption only. Let’s just hope that this project materializes sooner than we think.
*(Dr. William S. Co is chairman of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) and director of the Agriculture and Fishery committee.)*