Thai President Foods Plc (TPF), the manufacturer of Mama instant noodles, has recently unveiled a 5-year plan to open new instant noodle factories in every continent, as part of its ambition to grow its business in the next 5 decades.
Its Director Poj Paniangvait asserted that the company aims to boost revenue from overseas market to 50% in 2026, up from 29% currently. According to Poj, TPF will stick with instant noodle products but will move from volume to value base, focusing more on innovation and responding to the taste of younger generation of domestic and international consumers.
Pipat Paniangvait, the company’s Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive, said TPF will adhere to 3 core strategies namely to build good business partnerships; to have good products and conservative or efficient investment; and to grow its business in a sustainable manner over the next 50 years.
The expansion of the company’s international business will be divided into 2 phases, with the first phase aimed at investing in setting up representative offices in Hungary and distributors in India, Malaysia and Vietnam over the next 1 to 2 years. It also plans to set up factories in the US, the Middle East and Africa, bringing its number of production bases to 5 in 5 continents over the next 5 years. Presently, it has 3 factories in Asia in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Bangladesh, and one in Europe. Having factories in every continent will ease logistics issues and ensure quality products which will remain affordable while reducing import taxes.
Presently, the per capita consumption of instant noodles in Thailand is 53.2 packets, much higher than 15 packets globally. TPF expects its aggressive overseas expansion to boost overseas revenue to Bt 15 billion (US$449 million) in 2026, up from Bt 6.21 billion (US$186 million) in 2021.
Meanwhile, the domestic instant noodle market was projected to grow by 10% during the pandemic with volume reaching 3.7 billion packets in 2021. To celebrate TPF 50th anniversary this year, it plans to launch 3 limited edition Mama variants which include instant chicken khao soi-flavoured noodles, black pepper pork-flavoured wholewheat noodles and roast duck-flavoured dried jade noodles.
Apart from its global expansion plan, TPF will also spend Bt 400 million (US$12 million) to install new machinery at its 3 factories in Rayong, Lamphun and Ratchaburi, postponed since 2021 due to the pandemic. This will boost its production capacity by 5% from last year’s 2 billion packages.
