While waiting for better market conditions that will allow it to relaunch its shelved P4.5 billion initial public offering, North Star Meat Merchants, Inc. has expanded its business to include last mile logistic services for retailers such as the SM Group’s Alfamart. In an interview with reporters, North Star Founder and CEO Anthony Ng said that providing logistics services to third parties allows them to maximize the use of their existing cold storage facilities and distribution capacity. North Star Meat Merchanges Founder and CEO Anthony Ng

“We already have the cold storage facilities, the refrigerated delivery vans, and the software so we just need to add the items of our new logistics customers to our existing routes,” said Ng. He noted that, the items includes meat products that they supply to these retailers as well a other frozen products that their customers buy from from other suppliers which are delivered to North Star for distribution to their retail outlets. Ng said North Star already has a nationwide distribution network, from as far north as Aparri to Zambonga in the South, as its biggest customer for meat products is the SM Retail Food Group which includes SM Supermarket, SM Hypermarket, and SM Save More grocery stores. He said they have recently been tapped by SM Retail’s Alfamart to be their last-mile logistics partner after the expiration of the retailer’s contract with its existing service provider. Initially, North Star will be servicing all of Alfamart’s stores north of Metro Manila as the retailer still has existing contracts with its logistics providers for other parts of the country. Alfamart has a total of 1,500 stores nationwide with a large concentration of stores in Cavite. Meanwhile, Ng said their meat business continues to be strong in the first quarter and they are hoping to be able to sustain the strong sales they experienced during the pandemic. During the pandemic years, people cooked at home and buy meat from nearby grocery stores so sales was strong for North Star. Ng said the reopening of the economy has also meant that people are dining out more often and doing less cooking at home. He also noted that, because of inflation and supply issues because of the African Swine Flu, margins are not as good as in previous years even though sales are keeping up so far. The PSE had approved North Star’s P4.5 billion IPO plan consisting of up to 392 million common shares broken down to 360 million primary shares and up to 32 million common shares with an over-allotment option of up to 58 million secondary shares at an offer price of up to P10.00 per share. North Star had planned to use the capital raised from its IPO to expand its cold chain infrastructure, improve its operating cycle efficiencies and expand its product lines and research and development work. Ng said that, with the IPO shelved, they have been getting strong interest from both local and foreign investors for possible strategic and private placements but they have decided to just wait for the right time for an IPO to have a wider investor base. In the meantime, he said banks have been very supportive of their funding requirements for their existing operations.