The country’s leading food ingredients and oleochemical firm D&L Industries is optimistic that its latest production facility in Batangas will help its goal of achieving its export target.

“To date, our Batangas plant has been instrumental in opening up new markets for us as we aspire to become a truly global Filipino manufacturing company,” D&L president and chief executive officer Alvin Lao said in a virtual media briefing Monday.

In the first quarter of the year, share of exports to the company’s revenue stood at 32 percent.

Lao projected that exports’ share to revenues will reach mid-to-high 30s (percent) by end of 2024, and contribute 50 percent to its revenues in the next two to three years.

Lao said the company would not need to build another facility to achieve its exports aspiration.

“In 60 years of manufacturing, one of the lessons we’ve learned in building a manufacturing plant is we don’t want to build it just catering to growth for the next two or three years… What we did is we built it a lot bigger,” he said.

He said it entails bigger cost in the short term, but the company will save in the long run as constructing new facilities in the future would cost more with the increasing value of construction materials.

“You can say we’re overspending in the short term because we want to get the savings in the long term,” Lao said.

He noted that the Batangas plant still has capacity for adding new production lines, which equates to additional investments and hiring of additional workforce in the future.

Lao said the Batangas plant is currently running at below 50 percent, yet the company remains profitable.

“We don’t need to maximize utilization to maximize our margins or to make money,” he said.

Meanwhile, the listed firm declared cash dividends to its stockholders at PHP0.161 per share, plus a special cash dividend of PHP0.048 per share, disbursing a total of PHP1.49 billion.

Payment will be made on July 3. (PNA)