SMBbuilding brewery in US

Beer giant San Miguel Brewery plans to spend up to $150 million to set up a beer brewery in Los Angeles, California, to cater to growing demand for its beer products in North America.

SMB is also investing $500 million in the next two and a half years to expand its domestic beer business. It is set to build new breweries in Iloilo and Cagayan de Oro, each with an yearly production capacity of two million hectoliters, SMB chair and San Miguel Corp. president Ramon S. Ang told reporters yesterday after SMB’s stockholders meeting.

Ang said SMB would also expand the existing bottling facilities in Bacolod, Davao, Cebu, Polo (Valenzuela) and San Fernando all at the same time.

“We’re expanding these plants because through this, we can export more beer to many countries,” Ang said.

SMB, which has been operating in the last 126 years, wants to increase its export volume to the Middle East and America.

“I think soon, America will have a bigger potential. Our in- tention right now is to have a brewery in the West Coast,” Ang said, adding that the site should be close to the critical mass of the Filipino community in the US.

Ang said he was set to fly to the US in June to finalize the purchase of a property in Los Angeles for the brewery. SMB needs a 10-hectare land for a brewery with a 2-million hectoliter yearly capacity, he said.

This will be SMB’s first time to set up a brewery in the US.

Ang said SMB would also have to expand its production capacity in the Philippines, where the average utilization rate of its existing facilities is now about 95 percent.

SMB has capacity to produce 16.8 million hectoliters of beverage in the Philippines yearly. Overseas, it has an annual capacity of 7.1 million hectoliters.

He said SMB would use internally generated funds for the expansion.

“SMB has so much money you can leverage it to make a $10billion acquisition, if there’s an opportunity,” Ang said.

The company’s net profit last year grew by about a third to P17.7 billion as sales volumes reached an all-time high.