The Board of Investments (BOI) has approved two agri-processing and production projects with a combined worth of P86 million.
In a statement on Tuesday, the government’s main investment-promotion agency announced that the expansion of 557 Feather Meal Corp.’s poultry-dressing facility and R-LEY Trading’s roasted cashew-nuts factory have qualified for government incentives.
Feather Meal Corp.’s project qualified under the 2017 Investment Priorities Plan’s agriculture, fishery and forestry category, while R-LEY’s investment was approved under the list of eligible export activities.
Feather Meal Corp.’s new facility for poultry dressing with processing plant and cold storage in Tarlac caters exclusively to the processing requirements of San Miguel Foods Inc. (SMFI).
The expansion adds an additional 12.48 million birds annually. Its existing registered capacity is 19.968 million a year, representing an increase of 63 percent in annual production capacity.
R-LEY Trading, meanwhile, is considered a medium-scale enterprise, with an expansion project worth P7.87 million in Roxas, Palawan.
Its investment will entail installation of additional equipment to boost cashew production.
The expansion project involves acquisition of automatic machines to be imported from Vietnam, decorticating machine, shelling machine, sorting machine, peeling and packing machines. With the expansion, it will also process roasted whole cashew nuts.
R-LEY is an existing processor of semiprocessed cashew nuts and has been selling to several trading centers in Palawan, Pampanga, Bohol, Iloilo and Cebu since 2012, but it is not registered with the BOI.
“In acquiring new machines, the firm will increase its production by over 800 percent over five years,” Trade Undersecretary and BOI Managing Head Ceferino S. Rodolfo said in a statement.
The firm produced 11,250 kilograms of cashew nuts in 2016.
In the first year of expansion, it will produce 20,000 kilograms (kg), and by the fifth year, production is seen at 102,000 (kg).
Commercial operation is slated to start on October 2017 with an initial 19 employees, which will increase to 66 personnel by the fifth year.