Universal Robina and Calbee sign joint venture to set up snacks factory in the Philippines

The Philippine-based Universal Robina Corporation has teamed up with Japan’s largest snack food company Calbee Inc. to establish a local manufacturing joint venture which is expected to grow into a P2-billion (40+ million USD) company in terms of annual net sales by 2020.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Monday, URC said it has signed the 50-50 percent joint venture agreement with Calbee on Friday. The disclosure said the venture would manufacture “unique and high quality” snack products in the Philippines and would start business by 2015. “The joint venture aims to grow sales of Calbee products and expand market share in the Philippines,” the disclosure said.

The initial paid-in capital of the joint venture company to be called Calbee-URC Inc. is about P654 million. It will be based in Pasig City.

As the joint venture company aims to achieve annual net sales of P2 billion by 2020, it is “expected to contribute to URC’s medium to long term business performance,” according to the disclosure. For its part, Calbee sees the Philippines as “one of the promising snack foods markets.”

Tokyo-based Calbee is the largest snack food company in Japan, with 2013 sales of over 179.4 billion Japanese yen and a dominant 52.3 percent share of the Japanese snack food market.