SMPP posts higher revenues in 1st 7 mos

Driven by the increasing demand for glass as a packaging format, San Miguel Packaging Products’ (SMPP) glass business registered higher revenues in the first seven months of the year.

In a statement issued yesterday, SMPP said its glass business revenues hit P4.04 billion for both domestic and international operations. The company, however, did not provide comparative figures from a year earlier.

Domestic operations account for 85 percent of SMPP revenues while 15 percent is for international operations.

Demand for glass has increased over the years as glass remains the preferred packaging format in the beer, liquor and non-alcoholic beverage industries. A significant number of food and pharmaceutical variants also remain in glass containers.

SMPP expects to sustain its gains for the rest of the year with the continued high demand for glass which comprise a third of SMPP’s revenues plus the maximum utilization of its furnaces as well as synergies with other packaging formats such as composites, paper, metal and pallets.

SMPP also expects the completion of San Miguel Yamamura Asia Corp.’s second furnace in Imus, Cavite in 2006 to further boost its revenues.

The project, in joint venture with Nihon Yamamura Glass of Japan, is expected to produce glass by as much as 80,000 tons, making its output the biggest from a single furnace in the country.

The project involves the construction of a two-floor production and warehouse building equipped with state-of-the-art machines for raw material batching and melting, bottle forming, inspection and packing.

San Miguel Yamamura also exports glass to Australia, North America and other countries in the Asia Pacific region.

The San Miguel group has four glass plants and one glass mold plant in the country and a glass plant each in Vietnam (San Miguel Yamamura Haiphong Glass Co. Ltd.) and China (Zhaoqing San Miguel Glass Co. Ltd.).