Philip Morris to invest P1B more in Subic warehouse

Subic Bay Freeport — Cigarette maker Philip Morris International (PMI) announced it will invest an additional P1 billion for the construction of phase two of the regional tobacco warehouse here.

During the inauguration of the first phase of the warehouse, Philip Morris Philippines Manufacturing Inc. managing director Chris J. Nelson announced they will put up a purpose-built warehouse beside the existing facility.

The soon-to-be- built warehouse, Nelson said, will be done in 2009 and will have a capacity of 24,000 metric tons of tobacco.

The phase two will be four times the size of the existing facility.

Philip Morris also inaugurated yesterday a P30 million facility at the Freeport zone. The first phase involved the renovation and refurbishing of the 10,000 square meter building 8120 of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) located in the Boton area.

“What we are inaugurating today is just the first phase of our investment valued roughly P30 million,” he noted.

“In the future, PMI will expand this facility to include the construction of a new, state of the art warehouse that will be several times bigger than the capacity of Building 8120,” Nelson said.

Aside from Nelson, also present during the inauguration were Senator Richard Gordon, SBMA Administrator Armand Arreza, SBMA Chairman Feliciano Salonga and other executives of the company.

According to Nelson, the company chose Subic to be the storage hub because of its strategic location.

“Simply put, Subic has several advantages over other places in Asia because of its strategic location in the region,” Nelson said.

The Freeport zone, he said, provides reasonable advantage in cost and efficiency over the various storage areas where tobacco leaf at the country of origin are kept.

The new facility will store tobacco leaf bought from suppliers in other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and India.

With the warehouse expansion, Philip Morris will increase tobacco purchases not only from the country but also from other Asian countries. The leaf stored will be used for the production of cigarettes in their plants in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.