The listed company intends to invest Bt500 million in expanding Crystal’s production capacity in every region, and will conduct a marketing campaign to strengthen its brand image as a high-quality drinking water, said Sermsuk’s president, Vivek Chhabra. Capacity will be expanded in Pathum Thani, Chon Buri, Surat Thani, Nakhon Sawan and Nakhon Ratchasima.

The budget will also include the opening of new bottling facility in a northeastern province, to be opened by the end of this year. The company, however, declined to disclose the location at this point in time.

“With the expansion, we will be able to increase overall capacity for Crystal drinking water by 1.2 million cases per month, or 15 per cent, by the end of this year. It will serve the company’s target of selling 100 million cases of Crystal drinking water this year, which would be 15 per cent higher than last year’s level.

“We will focus on domestic growth within the next two to three years before exploring opportunities for Crystal drinking water in the region, in line with ThaiBev’s 2020 vision to become a leading beverage player in the region,” he said.

“For Thailand, we want to be the number one drinking-water brand in the Kingdom. We are already the leading player in terms of quality image, and our aim is to become the leader in the market in volume terms in the future,” he added. Sermsuk will also invest Bt50 million in a new marketing campaign, aiming to build the Crystal brand into the most desirable drinking-water brand among ‘next-generation’ consumers, while targeting volume growth to 100 million cases for the year.

“The path to building up the Crystal brand to become a high-quality favourite for consumers is based on three key pillars that contribute to a strong foundation for Crystal. This includes our strategy that focuses on Thai consumers who are increasingly health conscious by offering them the highest-quality water,” Vivek explained.

Notable success

He added that although last year had been a very challenging period for the Thai economy, Crystal had still achieved notable success due to consumers being concerned about their health and water quality.

“In 2015, the Bt32-billion drinking-water market was highly competitive and saw growth of 11 per cent, with Crystal playing an integral part in driving the market. Crystal earned a 17-per-cent market share thanks to a sales increase of 18 per cent over the previous year. This was higher than overall drinking-water market growth. Crystal has become the most desirable drinking-water brand among next-generation consumers,” the president said.

“We will strengthen Crystal’s brand image as a quality drinking water as well as introduce a new marketing campaign with a Bt50-million budget in 2016 based on the concept ‘Same Things Could Be Different’.

“We have invited rising heartthrob star Naphat ‘Nai’ Siangsomboon to be Crystal’s new ambassador for the marketing campaign, to encourage consumers to lead healthier lifestyles and recommend that they select high-quality drinking water,” he said.

Sermsuk has found that next-generation consumers are selective about the bottled water they drink, he said, adding that consumers should therefore acquire knowledge about the different types of water they refresh themselves with by looking for a standard that they can trust.

The “Same Things Could Be Different” TV commercial is n|ow being aired, while innovative |digital billboards will be set up in Bangkok and surrounding areas |to encourage consumers to lead healthier lifestyles.

Sermsuk anticipates the campaign will reach more than 5 million customers in a single month.

The measure follows a suggestion from the State Enterprise Policy Commission, which has urged the airline to instead focus on business restructuring.

President Charamporn Jotikasthira said at a press conference yesterday after a board meeting that the company has to manage its existing fleet in keeping with the commission’s suggestion at a meeting on Monday that urged Thai Airways to review its plan to expand its fleet.

THAI reported cabin factor of 73.3 per cent at the end 2015, which was better than its cabin factor of 68.9 per cent in 2014. The existing cabin space is seen as adequate to serve the growth in the number of customers this year and there is no need for new aircraft.

“We cannot say right now whether we will be able to delay deliveries of the aircraft. What we are trying to do is to negotiate with both Airbus and Boeing to delay deliveries. If our efforts fail, we will find other ways of managing our fleet,” he said.

According to the business plan, THAI will receive delivery of two new aircraft this year, seven next year, and another five in 2018.

Charamporn also said that the company’s plan to sell its non-core assets, such as office branches and residential units for its staff – both local and overseas – would start within this year. They include 10 assets in overseas markets such as residences for staff – in Jakarta, London, Copenhagen, and two residential units in Singapore and five office branches – in Sydney, Rome, Madrid, Hong Kong, and Penang. In Thailand, the airline owns nine branch offices in Mae Hong Son, Phitsanulok, Udon Thani, Nan, Trang, Surat Thani, Phuket, and two office branches in Hat Yai. They are worth about Bt1 billion altogether.

He said that THAI had revised its business plan to boost cabin factor from 73.3 per cent at the end of last year by expanding its destinations in order to grow its total revenue this year, he said.

“We hope our financial results will be better this year, as we have focused more on cutting costs, and increasing revenue,” he said

He added that decrease in oil price would help the company to reduce its fuel cost. However, the company has hedged the price of fuel accounting for 45 per cent of total fuel used annually by the airline.

The company yesterday also announced a plan to start paying a dividend for the first time in more than a decade, ahead of a Bt497-million rights offering set from February 1-5. Its board of directors will meet on February 26 to declare the dividend payout policy and approve the firm’s business plan.

IEC’s stock price shot up 50 per cent to close at 3 satang during trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand yesterday, passing its rights-offering price of 2.2 satang.

Bhusana said IEC’s forecast was for the group’s profit to rise from a two-digit figure to Bt210 million this year, Bt273 million in 2017, Bt323.5 million in 2018, Bt418.4 million in 2019 and Bt533.8 million in 2020.

The major contributors to this huge earnings-growth projection will be MSW (municipal solid waste) power projects and waste-plastic-pellet projects.

“Biomass projects will not generate a big profit, while we will not expand our solar-power business,” he said.The forecast is “conservative” because it does not include potential income from its planned Bt4-billion “integrated gas hub”, a complex of sugar-cane molasses, biogas, ethanol and compressed bio-methane gas (CBG) factories. It is courting PTT, Bangchak and other investors to join the project. Renewable energy, comprising MSW, solar and biomass power plants, is expected to contribute 91 per cent of IEC’s revenue in 2015, with the balance made up by the information and communica

tions technology business.

Renewable energy is estimated to fall to 46 per cent of revenue this year, as the waste-plastic-pellet plant in Rayong will start up and contribute 47 per cent, while the ICT (information and communications technology) business will slide further to 7 per cent.

IEC’s bottom line is expected to improve this year since it will realise full-year earnings from all of its power plants, while the waste-plastic-pellet plant alone is expected to generate a net profit of Bt195 million.

Yunnan Water Investment, a Hong Kong-listed company with two Chinese state enterprises among its major shareholders, has agreed to invest with IEC in all municipal-waste projects. This would help relieve the firm’s investment burden.

Bhusana said he might succeed Komol Jungrungreangkit as the second-largest shareholder of IEC after the rights offering, since he was ready to buy more shares than the 8:1 allowed by the subscription ratio, if some shareholders do not exercise their rights.

IEC missed its 2015 financial target because it incurred a loss of Bt148 million from conducting “machine re-engineering” at its GIDEC and Sa Kaew MSW power plants.

However, the GIDEC plant now can run at 80 per cent of capacity and the Sa Kaew plant at full capacity.

Other causes include the delay of the construction of its waste-plastic-pellet plant in Rayong due to complaints from local communities, machinery and liquidity problems, and the delay in securing the power purchase agreement for its Kampaeng Phet biogas plant.

IEC reported consolidated net profit of Bt41.3 million for the first nine months of last year, up slightly from Bt39.74 million booked during the same period of 2014. Net profit per share, however, slid from 0.03 satang to 0.02 satang during the period, because of a capital increase.

The company, the brewer of Tuborg beer, has been embroiled in widespread criticism this past week, after its decision to use a popular Myanmar term – tu po – on the label.

Tu po is the most famous Burmese term to describe the tradition of its water festival – Thingyan in Myanmar and Songkran in Thailand. It is also the title of the most famous song of composer Myoma Nyein. Written in the 1940s, the song is still played today across Myanmar during the festival in April.

Social-media users bombarded the company with criticism for using the term to promote its beer product. Worsening the situation was a comment from the son of the composer.

Shun Myaing held a media briefing in Mandalay last week. He slammed the company, saying an auspicious term like tu po should not be used to promote a beer brand. To him, it was a kind of disrespect to Myanmar people.

He threatened to file a lawsuit if Tuborg beer, with the local term on the label, is not withdrawn from the market.

Carlsberg yesterday reacted to the criticism, deciding to remove the Burmese term from the label.

“In light of the claims of the relatives of the late Sayar Myoma Nyein and the general debate around the use of Tu Po in the marketing of Tuborg beer, we will discontinue the use of this spelling going forward and, to avoid any future misinterpretation, the original Danish brand name Tuborg will be used in Myanmar,” the company said in a statement.

Myanmar Carlsberg also explained that the packaging just aimed to convey the spirit of fun and music, which is part of Tuborg’s DNA. It also described its respect for Myanmar sentiment and commitment to fair and transparent business practices.

Modifications

“We are taking immediate steps to implement the necessary modifications and will endeavour to have this completed before Thingyan. We appreciate the public’s patience while this is ongoing,” it said.

Carlsberg is the first foreign brewer to set up manufacturing in Myanmar. Myanmar Carlsberg was set up in 2013 as a 51:49 joint venture with Myanmar Golden Star, to run a facility in Bago that has annual capacity of 60 million litres per annum.

The joint venture was part of Carlsberg’s plan to establish strong presence in Indochina – touted as an important growth region for the company in Asia.

It has presence in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and it has a collaboration agreement with Singha Corp in Thailand.

According to the World Health Organisation, beer is the most popular alcoholic product in Myanmar, accounting for 82 per cent of alcohol consumption as of 2010. Others are spirits, at 12 per cent, and wine at 6 per cent.

Suphajee Suthumpun, who officially became group CEO on January 1, said she would focus on enhancing the group’s human resources, its working processes, the property portfolio, technology, and the company’s financial capability. The goal is to boost the group’s top-line growth and to foster a solid foundation to support future growth. She said the group’s growth engines this year would be its existing core hotel and education businesses, but it was also seeking to expand its already diversified portfolio. The new growth engine will still be in the hospitality field.

Suphajee, former CEO of Thaicom, said that while the domestic market was still the Dusit group’s main revenue contributor, she wanted to see its overseas operations contributing more than half of total revenue within three years.

In the property field, Dusit International has 26 hotels, of which 10 are its own and the rest are those to which it provides management services. The new group CEO is considering whether Dusit should focus more on building or acquiring new hotels of its own or on providing management services. Dusit International has 40-50 properties in pipeline over the next three to five years in 21 countries. Of that total, deals on the development of more than 40 projects are already signed. They are in the locations such as Singapore, Australia, Vietnam, Oman and Saudi Arabia. In most cases, Dusit International will provide management services for these properties.

Suphajee said she would further enhance Dusit International’s already well-recognised hospitality brand and boost its human capital. She will also promote greater synergy between its hotel and education businesses.

With a strong background in information technology, she will utilise advanced technologies to improve the efficiency of the group’s management system.

“The IT infrastructure of our 26 existing hotels will be integrated to enable the group to leverage the customer database to develop effective marketing tools and customer satisfaction programmes,” she said.

The group will also promote more online engagement with customers and use IT to give them better service. Prior to her present post, Suphajee was CEO of Thaicom. Earlier she served as general manager of Global Technology Services at IBM’s Asean headquarters in Singapore, and country general manager at IBM Thailand.

Suphajee said the Dusit group is studying which financial instruments it should leverage to improve its financial capacity.

Suphajee is the third group CEO in Dusit International’s 67-year history and the first from outside the founding family of Thanpuying Chanut Piyaoui. She succeeded Chanin Donavanik, now vice chairman and chairman of the executive committee.

Suphajee said that she and Chanin shared a common passion to bring the unique and well-known Thai hospitality to the world. They also share the same passion for human-capital development and education.

Dusit International’s portfolio includes hotels and resorts under four brands: Dusit Thani, Dusit Devarana, dusitD2 and DusitPrincess.

It also owns and operates Dusit Thani College, a private educational institution offering culinary and hospitality-management programmes in partnership with the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne; Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School, a joint venture with a renowned Paris-based institute; and the recently launched Dusit Thani Hotel School, Thailand’s |first “paperless” hospitality school based onAsean Common Competency Standards for Tourism Professionals.

CABSAT counts 300 cable-TV operators in its membership. Of that total, 193 are operating on an analog system and the rest on digital technology. CAT aims for all 300 to use its fibre-optics system.

This MoU will pave the way for the state telecom agency to access CABSAT members’ cable-TV subscribers, totalling 3 million households. This will give CAT the chance to offer its broadband Internet service to them.

CAT acting president Colonel Sanphachai Huvanandana said the partnership would help the agency bring fixed-line broadband to CABSAT’s subscribers nationwide. Currently CAT has only 30,000 broadband users.

“After this MoU, CAT will approach these 300 CABSAT members one by one within two months to upgrade them to CAT’s fibre-optics network. This will proved a shortcut to connecting to potential users nationwide,” he said.

Manop Tokarnka, president of CABSAT, said the association’s members were required by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission to upgrade their services so as to rearrange digital-TV channel numbers and comply with its “must carry” rule.

Under the NBTC’s channel-numbering rule, all cable and satellite TV providers must reserve channels 1 to 36 on their set-top boxes for digital terrestrial TV stations. Meanwhile, the must-carry rule mandates all cable and satellite TV operators to broadcast all 36 commercial and public digital TV channels.

Currently only a few cable-TV operators can afford to upgrade to digital technology to comply with the rules. According to the NBTC, there are 295 cable-TV operators, of which 193 are operating on analog.

“This MoU is a win-win solution for both sides, as CAT can gain more broadband users and cable-TV operators can upgrade to digital,” Manop said.