CDO eyes 10% of corned beef mart

Having found a comfortable hold of the fresh meat market, principally hams and hotdogs, CDO Foodsphere Inc. is now venturing into the P6-billion corned beef market hoping to capture a 10-percent share in the first year. The local corned beef market is estimated at 60,000 to 70,000 tons a year.

CDO Foodsphere Inc. launched at a luncheon press conference yesterday its Pinoy Style guisado karne norte, a ready-to-eat canned meat viand, which it hopes to sell to housewives in the C,D,E and working mothers’ categories.

CDO president Jerome Ong said the decision to come up with "home-cooked but affordable" corned beef is in keeping with his mother’s legacy of cooking delicious but cheap food products for friends and relatives.

Founded 26 years ago, CDO (named after its founder, Corazon Dayro-Ong, a dietician-nutritionist) acquired and operated since 1996 its state-of-the-art technoplant in the sprawling 2.5-hectare complex in Valenzuela, Bulacan, which now has a corned beef line. CDO’s current market mainstays are hams, bacons, hotdogs and native delicacies such as longaniza, tocino and tapa.

CDO is promoting its new product line, cooked karne norte in sizes of 100 grams (priced below P10 per can) and 175 grams (a novelty in the market) for P17.50, or just about the same price as the existing leading brands in the market.

But unlike the leading brand, Argentina of Pacific Meat, which holds about 40 percent of the corned beef market, CDO will establish its niche among young Filipino families where both parents are working and could thus not afford to cook anymore, Ong said.

Right now the company depends entirely on imported beef for its new product line. It imports the raw materials from Australia, Asia and the United States but eventually – should the local livestock sector improve its productivity – CDO hopes to source portions of its raw material requirements from local producers.

Since the plant depends entirely on imported materials, the company is suffering from the high cost of dollars – with the continued deterioration of the peso – which is why CDO, along with other meat processors are asking the government for some tariff reductions.

The Philippine Association of Meat Processors Inc. (PAMPI) has filed a petition, now pending with the Tariff Commission, for a reduction in import duties from 10 percent to five percent. PAMPI’s membership controls 85 percent of the local market.

The group is optimistic that it would find a sympathetic ear with the Department of Agriculture, which it described to be always balanced in its decision, because the petition is designed to make corned beef and other canned meat products continously affordable (and with stable supply) for the consumers, which include the local livestock farmers themselves.

Besides, Ong said, if we get a reduction in import duties, then we can plow back the benefit to consumers in terms of reduced prices of corned beef and other canned meat products, which hopefully can be lowered by three to five percent.