Organic fertiliser companies look towards AEC
Organic fertiliser companies look towards AEC
A local organic fertiliser company, Maliny Agriculture Co Ltd, plans to cooperate with two experienced foreign firms on production capacity and marketing improvement ahead of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) at the end of next year.
“We expect to start cooperation with the Malaysian and Thai businesspeople on the improvements by next year,” the Maliny Group Co Ltd President, Mr Phoutsadou Inthavong, said recently.
“We have discussed the cooperation recently. Our cooperation will take about five years,” he said.
“The project will cost about16 billion kip (US$2 million) and I will be the main shareholder.”
The cooperation is aiming to increase the production capacity and market management development of the organic fertiliser firm, hoping to expand its supply coverage further in the country.
“The development will also help us on supply to a neighbouring country,” he said.
At present the factory's production capacity is only about 50,000 to 60,000 tonnes per year; so the cooperation will help upgrade production to larger quantities next year “because the market demand is larger than current capacity,” he said.
Maliny group invested more than 8.5 billion kip (US$900,000) to build the fertiliser factory in Phonhong district of Vientiane and hopes to open further factories in other provinces if demand for its products continues to grow.
Not only the Maliny group plans to improve the capacity to prepare for the upcoming AEC; another local organic fertiliser company, Chanthanom Agricultural Promotion & Import-Export Co Ltd, plans to cooperate with a major Thai fertiliser company on production capacity improvement ahead of the AEC.
Chanthanom company expects to start production capacity improvement by the end of this year; and the two companies will hold shares of about 50 percent each in the joint venture.
Chanthanom company has operated an organic fertiliser factory for 10 years now, based in Naxaythong district, Vientiane.
It signed a business cooperation agreement with the major Thai fertiliser company, Pakphoom, in June last year after seeing that their organic fertiliser production was not meeting quality standards and sales were slumping.
So it wants to cooperate with an experienced operator that has more modern production machinery; and it hopes Pakphoom will add more production equipment at the existing plant to expand production and ensure a higher quality product.
If it can do that it will able to supply Thailand; and it believes that if the Lao plant starts production, it will be able to export to big countries such as China.
Laos is the first country that Pakphoom, which has a production capacity of 1,500 tonnes per day, has decided to expand its production ahead of the AEC.
The AEC will transform Asean into a region with a free flow of goods, services, investment, skilled labour and capital.
In the AEC Blueprint, the Asean member states have agreed to reduce tariffs, improve frameworks for trade, better enforce compliance with standards and progressively open up national service sectors to cross-border supply and foreign investment.
vientiane times
