CHEMICAL firm D and L Industries Inc. (DNL) said on Thursday its unit Natura Aeropack Corp. (NAC) received from the government a certification to operate in a special economic zone (SEZ) in Batangas.
In its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange the company said the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) gave Natura its “Certificate of Registration as an Ecozone Export Enterprise” to engage in the manufacturing of coconut-oil fractions and coconut-based surfactants and downstream consumer products.
The said facility will be located inside the First Industrial Township (FIT) SEZ in Tanauan, Batangas and is slated to be commercially operational in 2021.
“The NAC facility is part of the expansion plans of the D&L Group, which will position the group to grow in the next 20 years,” the company said.
Natura is one of two firms that applied for Peza certification to operate in an economic zone in Batangas. The other was D&L Premium Foods Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of Oleo-fats Inc. (OFI), incorporated to cater primarily to OFI’s growing export business.
Natura is 70-percent owned by Chemrez Technologies Inc. and 30-percent owned by Aero-Pack Industries Inc. All these firms are wholly owned units of DNL.
Natura’s facilities will be dedicated for the manufacture of coconut-oil fractions, coconut-based surfactants and downstream consumer products, which are sustainable, naturally derived, mild and nonirritant. Product applications extend to health care, personal care, home care and baby care.
DNL president and CEO Alvin Lao earlier said the facilities will be completed in three years, or about the same time the company’s current facilities in Libis, Quezon City, reach its full capacity.
Lao said the Quezon City plant is about 70 percent to 75 percent of its full capacity. He added it can deploy additional plant lines and can produce more for export, just in time for the completion of the Peza-zone facilities.
“Products that we will manufacture in the new plant will be [made] available in the market but some of it [would be] not,” Lao said. “It will still be B2B [business to business].”
He added the Peza allows DNL to sell half of its production locally and the remaining half for export.
DNL’s new Peza facilities will more than double the current capacity, Lao said.
“Our debt is quite low, so it means we have room to borrow. So the facilities will be funded by [a combination of] debt and internally generated funds,” he said.
The facilities will sit on a 26-hectare property within the FIT-SEZ in Batangas.
In continuation of DNL’s asset-light model, the lot was acquired by the Lao family’s property firm and leased to DNL, the company said.
The project is expected to generate about 700 new jobs, with construction and commissioning to be completed in 2021. The current operations in Metro Manila should experience no significant disruption, according to DNL.