MANILA • Conglomerate San Miguel Corporation (SMC) plans to spend some 281 billion pesos (S$7.5 billion) to expand traditional and new businesses in the next two to three years, most of which will be in the Philippines.

In an investor briefing for SMC's bond offering of up to 20 billion pesos earlier this year, chief finance officer Ferdinand Constantino said the capital outlays would be made from the fourth quarter of last year to 2018 - 2019 .

"We want to enhance established businesses and continue to grow beverage, food and, even to a certain extent, the packaging businesses," Mr Constantino said.

At the same time, he said SMC wants to diversify and invest in its new businesses like power and fuel, and infrastructure businesses.

SMC is among the leading Philippine giants that made inroads in the region, diversifying their revenue base and improving their supply chain, long before Asean formalised the creation of the Asean Economic Community.

The San Miguel group, which controls 90 percent of the beer market in the Philippines, has brewery and sales operations in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. The group also exports beer products to more than 40 countries .

It will pour as much as 75 billion pesos into its traditional food business lines, due mainly to demand from increasingly affluent consumers.

EXPANSION PLANS The reason we did not expand our food business before is, at that time, we were seeing a slowdown in the demand for these products. But now, we see that our food and beverage lines and processed meat have very strong demand. That's why we're expanding. MR RAMON ANG, SMC president.

President Ramon Ang said in an interview the new investments would include new processing plants for its Pure Foods meat products and new bottling lines for its beer business.

"We are going to produce Spam now to export to Asean countries," he said, referring to a partnership with US-based Hormel Foods, which produces the processed meat popular with Filipinos.

PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK