Uni-President and Yeo Hiap Seng form strategic alliance

This article was written by Bowun Jhu and published by the Taiwan Journal on February 10, 2006. It reports that Taiwan's Uni-President Enterprises Corp. and Malaysia's Yeo Hiap Seng Berhad recently signed an agreement in Bangkok, Thailand, to establish a joint venture that will expand their markets in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

Uni-President is a leading food and beverage company in Taiwan, while Yeo Hiap Seng is based in Malaysia and Singapore. It is expected that the new joint venture will enable both companies to utilize each other's research and development facilities, production equipment and marketing channels. If cooperation between the two companies goes well, there may also be a chance for them to jointly explore the China market.

Among Southeast Asian countries, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia have the greatest purchasing power, with a total population of about 95 million and a combined gross domestic production of about US$340 billion every year.

Currently, Uni-President already has food- and beverage-processing facilities in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. The company expects that with the new joint venture, its revenues in Southeast Asia will increase by as much as 50 percent in 2006. The company's aim is to form strategic alliance with 10 major Asian food-and-beverage companies.