Philippines - Poultry industry

[Sally Furniss]

Excessive chicken inventory causing losses among growers

Written by Jennifer A. Ng / Reporter
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 22:52

THE large inventory of frozen chicken in the country?s cold-storage facilities is starting to hurt local poultry raisers as farm-gate prices are now on the decline, according to the United Broiler Raisers Association (Ubra).

Ubra president Gregorio F. San Diego Jr. said that to date, the total inventory of frozen-chicken products in local cold-storage facilities stands at 8.663 million kilograms. This is almost triple the 3.077 million kilograms registered in the same period last year.

?This inventory already includes frozen chicken imported within and outside of the Minimum Access Volume [MAV] scheme,? said San Diego in a telephone interview.

MAV refers to the quantity of an agricultural product that may be imported in a year at the in-quota tariff rate committed by the Philippines to the World Trade Organization.

The MAV for chicken products is set at 23.4 million kilos annually. Imported chicken products are slapped a uniform tariff of 40 percent for volumes imported within MAV and outside MAV.

Ubra noted that of the current inventory of frozen chicken, local producers accounted for 3.744 million kilos, while imports accounted for 4.919 million kilos.

The excessive inventory of frozen chicken, coupled with weak consumer demand for the produce, has caused farm-gate prices to decline to an average of P66 per kilo, from about P75 to P78 per kilo during the same period last year.

San Diego noted that the current farm-gate price is lower than the cost of production at P70 per kilogram. Poultry raisers usually incur a huge cost on feeds, which make up about 50 percent to 60 percent of total production cost.

?A number of poultry raisers has decided to stop production in the meantime because they are already incurring losses,? he said.

The Ubra chief, however, could not give an estimate as to the magnitude of the losses incurred by poultry raisers.

For the rest of 2010, the industry has projected broiler production to grow by about 20 percent to 630 million heads. San Diego, however, could not say yet whether this level of production is still achievable this year.

BusinessMirror tried to reach officials from the Department of Agriculture, but they were unavailable for comment.


http://businessmirror.com.ph/index....osses-among-growers&catid=53:agri-commodities

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Philippines - Poultry industry

Philippine Inoza to build large poultry complex
//26 Apr 2010
Newly-formed Inoza Development Corp in the Philippines, sister company of Bounty Fresh Foods, one of the largest poultry producers in the country, is investing a combined P583.9 mln (?9.93 mln) for 2 integrated poultry projects.

In the first phase a toll hatching plant for broiler (chicken) is to be built in Barangay Pada-pada, Gerona. The following stage will be a broiler grower facility in Barrio San Pedro, Bamban, Tarlac.

Inoza?s toll hatching and broiler chicken production will cater exclusively to Bounty Fresh Foods, also one of the biggest suppliers of fresh chicken to various local institutional food and restaurant companies as well as leading supermarkets.

Inoza?s proposed hatchery facility will employ a single-stage incubation system instead of the traditional multi-stage incubation. It will be made up of 20 state-of-the-art setting machines with a capacity of hatching 115,200 each or 2.3 mln eggs for one hatching cycle of 21 days, or up to 40 mln day-old-chicks annually.

The first project, reported to commence operation in January 2011, is a P231-mln (?3.9 mln) facility and is expected to employ 57 personnel. The second, costing P352.5 mln (?6 mln), will employ 25 personnel when commercial operation starts in February 2011.

6.3 million broilers

The second Inoza project, the broiler growing facility, will be dubbed as the "Blueberry Farm" since the firm claims it will be one of the most cutting edge facilities of its kind. It will be made up of 20 buildings each with a capacity of producing 45,000 broilers/building/growing cycle of just 30-32 days or up to 6.3 mln heads annually.

It will also be fully mechanical and computerized wherein the broiler chicks are expected to grow faster than the traditional open-sided growing of broiler chicks of 45 days.

The capacity per sq. m. would be doubled from the usual average of 10 to 20 heads and it will make use of cool cell technologies to control the temperature inside the buildings.

http://www.worldpoultry.net/news/philippine-inoza-to-build-large-poultry-complex-7374.html