Saturday, August 16, 2008 Hybrid rice distributor sees growth, eyes wider market
TWO years after it started distributing hybrid rice in Cebu, a rice distribution company experienced 500 percent growth and is now looking at selling in convenient stores to expand its market.
Shanna Louise Te Lopez of Happy Rice Company said by the fourth quarter this year, SL Agritech Corp. (Slac) will be coming out with the 300-gram packaging of hybrid rice that can be distributed to convenient stores.
Slac, a company under the Sterling Paper Group, is a seed producer of hybrid rice that is sold not just locally, but also in other countries in Asia.
The company also produces three variants of premium hybrid rice under the Doña Maria brand, which is solely distributed by Happy Rice Co. in Cebu.
In a news conference Thursday, Lopez said she started the distributorship company with an initial order of 10 metric tons, but now, the company already orders 40 metric tons on a monthly basis.
The Doña Maria rice—which includes the Jasponica, Jasponica brown rice and the Miponia rice —can be found in most grocery stores in the city.
Lopez added that she also has institutional clients, like hotels and restaurants.
Among the variants, the Jasponica is considered as the fastest moving product because of its taste.
A long grain variant, the Jasponica is a combination of the Jasmine and the Japonica rice. It sells at P1,620 per 25-kilogram sack.
“But the largest market for (our rice) are the Koreans in the country,” said Slac president Henry Lim.
Lim is in Cebu as the main speaker for the Meet the Business Legend Forum at the Cebu Parklane International Hotel. It was hosted by the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Believing that the production of hybrid rice will solve the country’s concerns on rice sufficiency, Lim initially invested more than P100 million in the year 2000 to put up a research and development facility within a 40-hectare farm in Sta. Cruz, Laguna.
First variant
In 2001, Slac established its first major seed production farm in Banay-Banay Davao Oriental with its first proprietary hybrid rice variant, the SL-8H.
One hectare of a hybrid rice farm can yield 14 metric tons of rice grains, with a 70 percent milling recovery rate and 80 percent head rice recovery rate.
The company owns a combined 1,500 hectares of farm land for its seed production in the country.
Slac also has seed production farms in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China.
Lim also revealed that the local government of North Cotabato is offering to allow the use of the 5,000 hectare-lot for hybrid rice farming, but only 100 hectares is initially being used. (DME)
