Malaysia Business Insight, by Irma Isip
The RD Group, the country’s biggest tuna exporter, is spending $45 million to expand its local and overseas facilities to meet growing demand for its products, company chairman Rodrigo Rivera Sr. said.
Rivera said RD is spending $30 million to add a new line to its plant in Papua New Guinea.
Rivera said RD is also expanding its second cannery in General Santos from 140 to 200 tons a day at a cost of $15 million.
Its facility in Papua New Guinea has a capacity of 200 tons per day in raw materials while the one in Indonesia, which cost $17 million to build, handles up to 80 tons per day.
About 60 to 70 percent of the output of its General Santos facility goes to the export market. Big tuna, which weigh 20 kilograms and above, are exported to Japan and Europe while those below 10 kg are processed.
Buyers usually put their brands on their tuna.
RD prefers exporting in semi-processed form for canning in other countries like Europe. This eliminates the need for packaging and labeling.
The company’s expansion will to 11,000 the number of its workers, as fishing and canning are both labor-intensive. Of this number, 7,000 are in General Santos City.
Ninety percent of its workers are women.
RD will start the expansion beginning the first quarter of 2010.
Rivera said RD is also expanding one cannery in General Santos from 140 to 240 tons per day. This will 1,200 additional jobs.
The company exports 14 containers of fish, both finished products and fishmeal, daily. One container is valued at $14,000.
There are six canneries in General Santos, and RD is the biggest, accounting for 25 to 30 percent of the market.
RD exports almost 100 percent of its output with the United States, Europe and the Middle East as its main markets.
RD started as a pawnshop in 1976 in General Santos and became diversified by 1999.
It registered its deep-sea fishing project with the Board of Investments in 1992. Ten agri-based projects have been registered with the agency.
Today the company has 40 subsidiaries and major divisions engaged in fishing, agribusiness, manufacturing, processing, banking, pawning, insurance, real estate development, hotels and retailing of hardware and fishing supplies.
It is composed of four fishing companies: RD Fishing Industry Inc., RD Tuna Ventures Inc., South Sea Fishing Ventures Philippines Inc. and Asia Pacific Allied Fishing Ventures Corp.
RD is the largest fishing entity in the SOCSKSARGEN region of Mindanao, the country’s undisputed tuna capital. The RD Fishing’s fleet consists of 102 vessels.
The fishholding capacity of the fleet’s super seiners ranges from 450 to 1,200 metric tons; while the reef carriers have a maximum capacity of 2,400 metric tons.
The RD Manufacturing Group is spearheaded by Philbest Canning Corp., a tuna processing plant located in Barangay Tambler, General Santos City. The cannery produces two varieties of canned tuna products – 307 for retail and 603 for food service products. With a manufacturing capacity of 150 metric tons per day, the plant employs more than 1,500 residents in the area.
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