â€World-class. Best quality product. Top of the line assembly plant.†This is how Lucio Ong, president and chief executive officer of Genpack Corporation, described their corporate image.
Nestled in a sprawling eight-hectare modern plant complex in Tambler, the company opens its door today to guest and visitors when the plant is formally inaugurated.
Although there are already three can plants in the city, Ong says they have a competitive edge over the others. “We have something different from them,†Ong told this writer.
That difference is a 20-meter long machine that coats tin sheets with epoxy phenolic, a food grade coating material crucial to the preservation of canned tuna.
Ong says the technology is approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
Most can plants, including pineapple giant Dole Philippines Inc., imports their tin sheets already coated or have them coated in Manila, which significantly increases the cost of materials.
Owing to the competitive advantage of their technology, Ong said they have been approached by some local can plants for possible tolling agreement. “It reduces the costs like freight and handling if these tin sheets are coated here,†Ong explained. He said the quality would still be at par with the world's best. “The bottom line there is you use the right coating materials,†which he said is imported, as are the rest of their raw materials.
Controlled temperature oven
The firm's top honcho later accompanied this writer to a guided tour of the sprawling plant complex with their machinery so neatly arranged that one would not notice, except for the whirring of the machines, that production is going on.
Ong explained that a crate of tin sheets, roughly 1.5 tons, is fed to a machine not very different from a printing press being fed with a sheet of paper. The “vacuum pump†suctions a sheet of tin to a conveyor that coats the plate with an orange-colored, paint-like thick liquid.
Ong assured that the material is harmless and safe and has passed the strict standard of Food and Drug Administration. It then passes through an oven which temperature is so controlled that any drop or rise of desired levels would mean failure to pass the strict quality control imposed by the company.
Each sheet is heated and cooled inside the oven chambers for 18 minutes before it is again feed to the conveyor for coating of the other side. The machine can coat 90 tin sheets per minute.
Stamping plant
When these tin sheets are already coated, they go to the stamping machines of which Genpack has three different ones. In the tuna canning industry, each can sizes are given code numbers.
The 202 tin cans are the most popular size used by manufacturers of canned sardines in the country. These are your Ligo, Young Town, Mega, 555 and other brands of sardines popular in the supermarket racks. But the tuna export industry, meaning the canned tuna export sector, widely uses the 307 size, which account for 70 per cent of the total production of Genpack.
The machines - and there are several of them - that churn this can size, can each produce up to 600 cans per minute The other can size is what Ong says the 603. Ong would later explained to this writer why the can, roughly the size of a half-gallon ice cream container, are grooved. He described the process as digging. “To give the can strength and prevent it from unnecessary dents,†Ong said.
The said machine could produce up to 150 pieces per minute.
Market potential
For as long as there is a strong demand for Philippine canned tuna, the potentials of the can-manufacturing sector are even brighter.
â€(Philippine) canned tuna, are, shall we say, 95 per cent all exported. The demand is huge. It is big,†Ong beamed.
Canned and fresh tuna products are now catching the US and European market like wildfire. Because of the omega oil found in tuna products, health-conscious consumers throughout the world are shifting their food preferences.
â€Tuna is becoming a very attractive product because it is now being considered as health food,†Ong explained. So bright are the prospects that canned tuna producers told him that the worldwide market is virtually “limitless.â€
Right now, he continued, almost 90 per cent of their production goes to Philbest, a canning plant owned by businessman Rodrigo Rivera Sr. who is also one of the owners of Genpack Corporation. The rest goes to two other canning plants where Rivera also own substantial shares.
Ong however admitted that the demand for tin cans largely depends on the volume of catch made by local fish producers.
Since tuna are highly migratory fish specie, there are lean and peak production months. But on the average, Ong says they produce up to 500 metric tons of different tin can sizes per month - still significantly lesser than the 800 metric ton capacity of all their stamping machines.
The Genpack executive said they eventually would like to provide local canneries with cheaper but high-end quality tin cans. At present, there are seven canning plants operating in the city.
Ong said if only more foreign vessels are making port calls in the city, the canned tuna export industry would be even bigger and that the can plant would definitely become a major sub-sector in the industry. Right now, Ong said they are setting their sights toward expanding their plant, including increasing their capacity.
They are reportedly eyeing a P300 million-expansion project on top of the P500 million capital already poured in for the construction of the plant building, purchase of machinery and equipment and inventories.
First Gentleman
When this writer was interviewing Ong, he was also directing some of his executives to entertain foreign visitors who came in for the inauguration of the plant scheduled for today. “There are Singaporeans, Japanese, Taiwanese - mostly suppliers,†Ong said.
But the most important visitor is perhaps First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, husband of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The chairman of the Development bank of the Philippines, Vitaliano Nañagas is also arriving today with Arroyo.
For the more than 80 employees of Genpack, it surely would be a big occasion.
Ong would not name the other incorporators of the company but he said majority of them would be coming over.
Before winding up this interview, Ong said they are giving their clients the assurance that they are producing the â€best quality world class sanitary cans†using top of the line technology and equipment.