Teo Seng Capital puts Sungai Linggui layer farm on hold

MUAR: Teo Seng Capital Bhd has put on hold its layer farm in Sungai Linggui in Kota Tinggi and will instead focus on developing five new farms in Yong Peng, Batu Pahat.

Chairman Lau Jui Peng said the feasibility study found that it was not viable to develop the Sungai Linggui farm at this point in time.

“The management sees that it is more cost-effective to open new farms in Yong Peng if we want to increase our daily egg production,” he told StarBiz after the company’s AGM recently.

Another reason was that the new farms would be located near the company’s existing facilities such as the feedmill and paper egg tray plants.

According to Lau, the company would be investing about RM200mil within the next four to five years to open the five new layer farms.

The investment is part of its strategy to position the company as the largest listed layer farming entity in the country.

“When the Yong Peng farms are fully operational, we expect to increase our daily egg production from 3.5 million now to five million eggs by 2018 or 2019,’’ he said.

The company has almost 20 farms in Batu Pahat with over 4.5 million layer birds and with the five new farms, the number of birds would increase to 6.5 million.

Managing director Nam Yok San said with the new farms, the company expects to increase its eggs export to Singapore to between 40% and 45% from between 30% and 35% now.

Malaysia, said Nam, remained an important market given the good demand for eggs, plus the fact that the price of eggs has stabilised in recent years.

“Malaysia has one of the highest egg consumption per capita in the world at 365 eggs yearly as it is among the cheapest sources of protein,” said Nam.

For the financial year ended Dec 31, 2014, Teo Seng Capital made a net profit of RM48.79mil.

In 2013, the company made a profit of RM23.37mil.