Bambi brand banks on coconut's health benefit

CEBU, Philippines - Despite the entry of more brands in the vegetable cooking oil market in the Philippines, Cebu-based Bambi Cooking Oil brand is making its way well in the competition, banking on its strong health-benefit positioning.

Bambi Vegetable Oil, manufactured by the A.D. Gothong Manufacturing Corporation, has been in the market for over 30 years. Now taking advantage of the growing health-conscious consumers, the company’s president Barbara Gothong-Tan said, the company will strengthen its distribution network to provide Filipinos with affordable and healthy vegetable cooking oil product.

Vegetable cooking oil is one of the basic necessities in the household. The reason why a growing number of players and new brands are outsmarting each other to gain patronage from millions of households.

Tan said the Bambi brand, which is also carried by its margarine product, is capitalizing on the health benefit offered by the coconut oil, as its product is 100 percent made of coconut oil, which is abundant in the Philippines.

Compared to other kinds of oil products, such as Palm, Canola, Corn, among others, Tan believes that coconut oil has the largest counts of health benefit, which most Filipinos do not know yet.

Although the brand has been able to gain popularity in its home-market in Cebu, Tan said the company is positioning to strengthen its distribution network in the Visayas and Mindanao, to expand the products’ availability, thereby also benefiting the coconut farmers in the country.

According to Tan, Bambi will lead the campaign to educate the market in choosing the good cooking oil, which offer low cholesterol content. Fortunately, based on a study conducted by Conrado S. Dayrit, coconut-based cooking oil has the lowest cholesterol content compared to other sources such as Palm, Soybean, corn, butter and lard.

Unfortunately, because other powerful countries such as the United States do not have the abundance of coconut trees, big manufacturing corporations have successfully made a campaign downplaying the health benefits of coconut-based cooking oil.

Although the trend of using extracted oil from coconut is now becoming more popular in the beauty and wellness sector, Tan said the market should be more aware of the cooking oil they are using, whether it provides good health benefits.—