Speaking at the official opening of the pilot plant of the current GII in Mahidol University’s faculty of science, president and chief executive officer Thiraphong Chansiri said Thai Union expected to launch the first product developed from the GII in the fourth quarter of this year and would continue to roll out many new products originating from this centre to Europe, the United States, and other markets.

“We will spend no less than Bt500 million on land and construction alone, not including equipment and other expenses. With a size that is five times that of the current centre, we believe we will be able to increase the number of researchers in our facilities by several times from the current 100 people,” he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak, who observed the GII pilot plant yesterday, said the cooperation that Thai Union had clinched with universities in this project boded well for his dream of transforming Thailand into a new economic-development model to overcome its sluggish growth.

Thiraphong said that besides developing new products, GII was also focusing on developing new production processes, one outcome of which would be revolutionising the canned-tuna industry for the first time in 50 years, within the next two years.

The company earlier earmarked Bt600 million for R&D in tuna products alone.

Current government incentives such as the mobility scheme that allows university researchers to work for the private sector and the International Headquarters scheme that slashes personal income tax of researchers to 15 per cent are sufficient to support innovation investments by the private sector, he said.

Somkid said he had asked Thai Union to consider joining the Ministry of Science and Technology’s “Food Innopolis” project that would be launched in the future.

Associate Professor Dr Sittiwat Lertsiri, dean of Mahidol’s faculty of science, said the collaboration with Thai Union had resulted in two more companies talking with the university about similar projects.

Thiraphong said fierce competition and declining profit margins in its industry in world markets prompted TU to start investing in R&D in 2014.

“The objective is to create differentiation and getting out of price-only competition and commoditisation, as Thailand’s wage costs are no longer the lowest. We will link science and technology to create high-value-added products such as allowing us to expand into the nutrition and cosmetics sectors,” he said.

TU yesterday also announced it was expanding the space of its current GII to 1,200 square metres and would invest more than Bt70 million for new research equipment.

On this occasion, three joint postgraduate programmes pertaining to the R&D at the GII were also signed with Mahidol, Kasetsart University, and King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi.

Kicked off in December 2014, the GII facility currently comprises six major platforms, including the pilot factory, a chemistry laboratory, and a nutrition laboratory.