Chairman Jormsup Lochaya said recently the company was in talks with three foreign firms for purchase of technology for generating power from waste. Two – Hitachi and Mitsubishi – are based in Japan, and the third is US-based Covanta.

He said all three were at the top of the field of power-generation technology, so the final decision would come down to price. “The power plant should have an internal rate of return exceeding 18 per cent,” he said.

Jormsup said the project, which would be the company’s first industrial waste-to-energy power plant, would have 10-megawatt capacity. It would be located in one of the northeast?ern provinces where the waste supply is sizeable, such as Sa Kaew or Prachin Buri.

He said construction of the power plant should kick off this quarter and would take about 12-14 months.

“The plant will require an investment of around Bt13 billion to Bt15 billion. Based on our revenue forecast, it should break even within six to eight years,” Jormsup said.

In the meantime, he said the company also planned to invest in community-based waste-to-energy plants, expecting to commence construction in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

In the initial stage, the company will start from densely populated areas because of the large amount of waste. However, the power capacity of each plant and location would depend on the government’s policy.

Each plant generating power from household waste is expected to require investment of Bt1.5 billion, Jormsup said.

“Superblock aims for overall capacity of 200MW from its waste-to-energy plants within a few years, resulting in estimated income of Bt55 million per megawatt,” he said.

He said construction of the company’s other power plants was complete and they were awaiting licensing approval.

Currently, Superblock’s power plants have been approved for combined capacity of 230MW upon commercial operation date. The company expects more approvals this month, bringing it to combined capacity of 500MW.

However, it should be able to reach total commercial operating capacity of 1,000MW by the end of this year and 2,000MW next year as planned, he said.

Akira Kawasaki, manager of Ariake Incineration Plant in Tokyo, said it had been operated since 1994, and there had never been any system errors.

The plant can burn around 400 tonnes of waste a day and generate 60-80 kilowatt-hours daily. He said the optimum temperature for burning waste was 800-900 degrees Celsius to avoid air pollution. The plant’s emissions are within the required standard.

Kawasaki said the outstanding point of the plant was a 16-kilometre pipe system that sucked in waste so that it could manage waste more easily and save logistics costs.

“Since Italmobiliare and HeidelbergCement signed an agreement regarding the sale to HeidelbergCement of Italmobiliare’s 45-per-cent stake held in Italcementi in July last year, we have discussed the policy for our subsidiaries in Asia, including Thailand,” he said.

“HeidelbergCement, which will be the major shareholder of Italcementi when the deal is complete this July, has a policy to maintain the business in Thailand and its business plan to expand [into] Myanmar, because HeidelbergCement did not have [a presence] in Thailand.

“Thailand is our production hub and business arm for expanding in Asean,” Pesenti said.

This will be an opportunity for HeidelbergCement to expand its business in Asean after the deal is complete, he added. Italcementi says the rationale of this merger is supported by a perfect geographical fit with Heidelberg-Cement’s existing footprint – with limited overlap of plants in Belgium and the United States – and the significant potential for synergies and the combination of strong innovation and research-and-development capabilities of both companies.

The combined group will have a production capacity of about 200 million tonnes of cement, 275 million tonnes of aggregates and 49 million cubic metres of ready-mix concrete. Pro forma 2014 revenues were about 16.8 billion euros, generated in more than 60 countries worldwide.

Italcementi Group holds a 49-per-cent stake in Thailand’s Asia Cement. The group also has business in Bulgaria, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Egypt and India, as well as operating in North America.

Last year the group reported consolidated revenues of 4.3 billion euros (Bt170 billion).

Asia Cement and its subsidiary Jalaprathan Cement have production capacity of 5 million tonnes of cement a year.

Nopadol Ramyarupa, managing director of Asia Cement, told The Nation the company had set aside an investment budget of Bt300 million to Bt500 million for maintenance of its three production plants here – in Saraburi, Phetchaburi and Nakhon Sawan – this year.

The company is also looking into regional expansion, including into Cambodia, he said. However, it has to wait for the deal between HeidelbergCement and Italcementi to be done in July before making a decision on expansion abroad.

He said implementation of the Asean Economic Community presented good potential for doing business in Myanmar and Cambodia as their governments embark on infrastructure projects.

Last year, Asia Cement recorded revenue of about Bt7 billion, up 3 per cent from 2014. Up to 10 per cent of its revenue was from overseas, and the rest from domestic demand.

The company targets revenue growth of at least 3 per cent again this year thanks to the Thai government’s policy to expand investment in infrastructure, projects that may run from the second half of this year into next year. This would boost the demand for cement by as much as 3 per cent this year, Nopadol said.

American architect Jennifer Siegal won the award, according to an announcement at the Teatro dell’Arte of the Triennale di Milano late on Thursday. There were three honourable mentions: Pat Hanson from Canada, Elisa Valero Ramos from Spain, and Cazu Zegers from Chile.

There were 20 nominees from 20 countries: Jordan, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Egypt, Sweden, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Morocco, India, China, Italy, the United States, Mozambique, Greece, Thailand, Slovenia and Chile.

Thailand was the only Asean country with a nominee.

“This was a great opportunity to [compete for] the arcVision Prize. This event opened the opportunity to meet with other female architects to exchange ideas and knowledge for developing architectural designs for the future,” Twitee, 43, founding partner of Department of Architecture Co Ltd, said in an interview with The Nation after the event.

Twitee founded Department of Architecture Co with Amata Luphaiboon in 2004. She has interesting ideas for contemporary design, illustrated by works such as the post-earthquake Pong Prae Wittaya emergency school in Chiang Rai in 2015 and a small multifunctional pavilion, the Flow, in Bang Saen in 2014.

Prefabrication

Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and a member of the jury for this prize, said Siegal won the arcVision award for her innovative use of prefabrication to develop buildings with low cost.

Stefano Casciani, scientific director of the arcVision Prize, said the Women and Architecture investigators explored the undiscovered landscape of individual ways of expression by a large group of female architects from all around the planet.

“It is definitely a new world of construction that has come to witness the growing importance of the female role in developing a new kind of ethics in architectural design, in terms of sustainability, social responsibility, and formal quality.”

Italcementi chief executive officer Carlo Pesenti said the arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture this year had selected feminine international architecture projects defined by the aspiration of beauty, the pursuit of functionality, and the hope to participate in the construction of new, happier cities and communities.

He said that by sponsoring the award, the group “reaffirmed its vision of ‘women’s issues’ within architecture that, above all, continue to amaze by producing masterpieces of technology and sustainability, marriages between materials and form and combinations of elegance and efficiency”.

Thailand would be a hub to support and facilitate the growth of Roos’s business in Asia.

“We’re originally from Holland. My great-great-grandfather founded the company in 1835, or about 181 years ago. I’m the sixth generation of the family. We [currently operate] more than 200 jewellery shops in Belgium and Holland,” said Rien Rozendaal, founder of and designer for Roos & Nijs.

“We started selling our Roos jewellery ornaments last week in China through Derier’s retail network with 80 stores in major cities, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Ningbo. [By] coincidence, we also started last week in Thailand as well with the appointment of Market Access Co Ltd as our master distributor covering Thailand and all [of the] Asia region,” he said. “We’re from the original Dutch company and we didn’t find any necessity to expand further in my home market as well as in Europe as we’re at the high level already. I believe in Asia as a promising region to grow our jewellery business.”

Rozendaal said starting to do business in China and Thailand arose from coincidences. In China for example, he was introduced by a Chinese friend in New York to the owner of Derier.

“It is not that I’m looking for distributors. Finding the right people who will be my partners is not easy. We have to share the same way of thinking, the same vision and passion, and common interests,” he said.

“They [distributors] should understand the European way of distributing the brand. In my way, doing business is not the first thing. My first thing is to get the same vision of how to market the brand.”

Rozendaal said his business approach was quite different from setting up business targets and growth.

“I like to design nice and beautiful jewellery. I have my target group in designing, that is my wife, not for the market. I design jewellery for the one I love, and appreciate that many women love this design too,” he said.

Chanokphol Chaisuparakul, co-founder and director of Market Access, said Roos was not something people saw every day, because of its unique designs and long heritage of 181 years. The brand is also high-end jewellery that people can wear every day.

“In five years, we think Roos could be a brand for sophisticated people who seek perfection in luxury jewellery. We aim to expand in Southeast Asia starting from Thailand, especially in Bangkok and big cities such as Chiang Mai, Pattaya and Phuket,” he said.

He added that in the first year, the company would open one flagship store for Roos jewellery as well as one dealership in Bangkok.

“We will start expanding Roos jewellery to some parts of CLMV next year,” said Chanokphol, referring to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

He added that the CLMV markets had a lot of potential, with people who are highly into networking, are well educated and have high spending power, and are fashion-oriented.

Somkiat Chaisuparakul, chief executive officer of Market Access, said Thailand’s gem and jewellery market had high growth potential. The market value in 2015, especially diamonds, was about Bt78 billion, with imports accounting for Bt19 billion and domestic production the remaining Bt59 billion. With the economic situation getting better, entrepreneurs are more confident that the market will rebound.

“This is a great opportunity for us to join forces with Roos in expanding their market from Europe to Asia,” he said.

“Using Thailand as a hub to support the liberalisation of the AEC [Asean Economic Community] market, we will market Roos diamond jewellery to customers in Thailand and [elsewhere in] Asia. We aim to become the top jewellery brand in Thailand by 2017 with annual sales of Bt200 million.

“We will expand Roos diamond jewellery to cover all potential markets in Asia, starting from CLMV, in the future,” he said.

Rittirong Boonmechote, president of TU’s global shrimp business unit, said the group’s revenues from the shrimp business were expected to grow from US$1.4 billion (about Bt45 billion) last year to $1.5 billion this year, and to $2.6 billion by 2020. As the group expands more overseas, revenues from its businesses in Thailand are expected to drop from 40 per cent of the total to 30 per cent by 2020.

Of the total incremental revenues targeted for the next four years, about Bt60 billion will come from organic growth of its existing businesses, while the rest will come from M&A and new businesses, he said.

Shrimp contributes about 27 per cent of TU’s total revenues at present. The growth plan for the shrimp business is in line with the global seafood group’s challenging goal to double its total revenue to $8 billion by 2020.

Rittirong said Thai Union, which last month announced a deal to acquire a 40-per-cent interest in Avanti Feeds’ wholly owned shrimp-processing unit Avanti Frozen Foods Private Ltd in India for 1.254 billion rupees (about Bt660 billion), was studying possibilities of expanding to Indonesia, Bangladesh and other countries.

“About 70 to 80 per cent of the world’s shrimp-production bases are in Asia. Today we have [a presence in] Thailand and India. We are also looking at other countries,” he said.

After the completion of its new factory this June, Avanti is likely to boost its total shrimp-processing capacity from 30-40 tonnes a day currently to 80-100 tonnes per day next year, making it one of the top three shrimp processors in India, while tripling its annual revenue from between $30 million and $40 million to $100 million next year.

Besides the feed, processing and hatchery businesses, TU |is gearing up to expand its |marketing and distribution channels and will introduce a new brand for its frozen shrimp products in the Thai market, together with the launch of |its seafood e-commerce plat|form around the middle of this year.

Rittirong said TU’s international shrimp business had outpaced the size of its domestic business partly because of the outstanding performance of its US subsidiary Chicken of the Sea Frozen Foods, which has taken the market No 1 spot for frozen shrimp and pasteurised blue crab in the United States.

US shrimp prices have stabilised so far this year, after tumbling 22 per cent in 2015.

The group will capitalise on the strong marketing network of Chicken of the Sea to move up its positions in the snow-crab, salmon and lobster markets there, he said.

However, TU’s shrimp sales to the European Union last |year fell to 4.7 per cent of the group’s total shrimp exports, from more than 10 per cent previously, because of a cut in the Generalised System of Preferences.

Meanwhile, Rittirong said the government and private sectors should cooperate to establish |a national hatchery centre that would require total investment of Bt500 million in a bid to strengthen research and development after a disease halved shrimp output to just over 200,000 tonnes last year.

The court will call in AIS and the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) for an urgent hearing today.

AIS said the extension was needed to prevent disrupting service to the 8.2 million subscribers on the band. This frequency slot has also not yet been assigned to any party.

Second request

The first request for an extension was made last month. The court enjoined the licensing body from ordering AIS to shut down the service at midnight on March 15 and allowed AIS to continue using the 900MHz band until April 14.

NBTC member Pravit Leesatapornwongsa said that if the junta permits the commission to award the 900MHz licence forfeited by a Jasmine subsidiary to AIS without holding a new auction, AIS should pay the first Bt8.04 billion instalment of the licence fee immediately.

AIS proposed to the NBTC this week that it award the 900MHz licence to one of its subsidiaries in exchange for paying Bt75.65 billion, the same price Jas Mobile Broadband quoted to win this slot in the auction last December.

The regulator passed AIS’s proposal to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha for consideration and is waiting to see if he will exercise his special power under Section 44 of the interim charter to approve the proposal.

Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam will discuss this matter with the NBTC today.

The NBTC’s telecom committee originally ordered AIS to pull the plug on the 2G service on March 15 after awarding the 900MHz licence to True Corp in the middle of last month.

AIS’s stock plummeted 6.13 per cent to close at Bt153 in trading yesterday.

AIS chief executive officer Somchai Lertsutiwong has now answered questions over why the company is willing to pay for the licence at a price it previously said was too high.

When its subsidiary Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) proposed to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) on Monday that it be awarded a 900MHz licence, for which it was willing to pay Bt75.654 billion, this raised the eyebrows of some analysts and academics.

They wondered why AIS had backtracked from what it said previously, that this price was too high. It is the same price Jas Mobile Broadband bid to win this licence at last December’s auction, in which AIS and other telecom operators also participated.

Some observers said that if AIS is willing to pay this hefty price, it should join in the new auction set for June 24 and grab the licence at the minimum starting bid of Bt75.65 billion, so there would be no need for the NBTC to ask Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha to decide whether the NBTC can grant AIS’s request to buy the licence right away.

But in a letter from Somchai, circulated to employees at 11pm on Tuesday, he said he believed that instead of waiting three months for the new auction and putting its 2G-900MHz subscribers at risk of a service shutdown, AIS should offer to buy the licence.

“Many may ask why AIS stopped raising the bid at the previous 900MHz licence auction, saying the price had got too high, and yet today we offered to buy the licence at the same high price. It’s because the competition situation changes all the time and our migration of 900MHz subscribers according to the original plan has experienced greater difficulty than expected. So we have to adjust to the situation in order to prevent possible service disruption,” the letter said.

While waiting for the government’s decision on the issue, AIS will hold a board meeting to ask for approval to buy the licence.

AIS has 8.2 million 2G subscribers, of whom 7.8 million are on AWN but still roam with AIS’s 900MHz network.

According to the rules governing the December auction, AIS had to shut down the 900MHz service once the NBTC awarded the licence to either of the winning bidders, which it did so to True Corp in mid-March.

The NBTC telecom committee ordered AIS to shut down the service on March 15 at midnight, but the company sought a Central Administrative Court injunction against the order. The court granted the injunction to compel the telecom committee to allow AIS to continue using 900MHz until April 14.

Later AIS asked the NBTC to extend that deadline to June 30.

According to a telecom analyst, AIS is likely to lower its dividend payout ratio to 70 per cent from the present 100 per cent in order to pay for the 900MHz spectrum, if it really buys the licence.

The payment for the 900MHz slot would be made from this year through 2019. To keep net gearing below 200 per cent, the lower payout ratio would be required through 2019.

The analyst believes the chance of AWN getting the spectrum is high, but its cost is likely to pressure AIS’s earnings. Still, the licence to the 900MHz spectrum should enhance AIS’s competitiveness in the medium to long term and would be a negative for its rivals.

The move forms part of the NBTC process for claiming possible damages from the mobile operator, following its failure to pay the initial upfront licence fee and place a bank guarantee for the remaining value to the regulator by the deadline of March 21.

The company won the licence in an NBTC auction last December by proposing a bid of Bt75.65 billion.

Following the default by JASMBB, the licensing body’s telecom committee appointed a working panel to examine whether it was possible to claim damages from the company.

Panel chairman Wongsakul Kittipromwong, who is also director-general of the Office of the Attorney-General’s Corruption Litigation Department, said the committee would on April 12 also separately call in parties related to JASMBB to request more information on the case.

The investigation is expected to be completed within 90 days.

Korkij Danchaivichit, deputy secretary-general of the NBTC, said the working panel had set up three sub-panels: one focused on working out the possible damages claim; another examining whether any of Jasmine International’s telecom and broadcasting licence-holders would be affected by the case; and another identifying those people involved in the case.

JASMBB is a subsidiary of Jasmine International.

The working panel called in Jasmine International chief executive officer Pete Bodharamik on Tuesday to inquire about the case.

Pete told the panel that among the domestic banks, he had contacted only Bangkok Bank about a guarantee as he had a good relationship with the bank and its president, Chartsiri Sophonpanich.

Bangkok Bank had wanted to be the sole provider of a bank guarantee to Jasmine International in regard to the 900MHz licence, he said.

However, while the company had almost clinched the deal, Bangkok Bank on January 20 set a condition that Pete and his father, Adisai, a former education minister, both sign personal guarantees.

Pete said he could not accept this condition as his father was very old, and he did not want him to participate in the deal.

His talks with Bangkok Bank about a guarantee stopped after he took that stance, he told the working panel.

He also told the committee that it seemed attempts were being made to block Jasmine International from obtaining the bank guarantee.

After the discussions with Bangkok Bank had come to nothing, Jasmine International initiated talks with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which offered to help if the company had a Chinese strategic partner, Pete explained to the panel.

The company then started to seek a possible partnership deal with Chinese companies, including China Telecom and China Unicom, he said.

Pete told the meeting that China Telecom had, however, declined to be its partner, and that he had also had a meeting with China Unicom.

He also approached a company he called China Sharing Mobile, but had received no response, he added.

A large investment fund supported by ICBC said it was ready to support Jasmine International to the tune of around Bt30 billion and take a 49-per-cent stake in the company, but the processes could not be completed by the March 21 deadline, the CEO told the working panel.