It is 7 a.m. as the van careens along a winding mountain road in Tagaytay, some 60 kilometers south of the Philippine capital of Manila. After an hour’s driving on rough roads, Grobest Feeds Philippines Inc. sales representative Justin Lee retains his upbeat mood, still talking cheerfully and cracking jokes.
The Philippine sun has given Lee a dark tan. As he talks animatedly in Tagalog with his Philippine assistant, it is hard to imagine that this is the first job that the 28-year-old from Taipei took after graduating from university.
“This trip isn’t so bad; I have customers near Lake Buhi in the southeast of Luzon Island, and it takes at least 10 hours by car to get there,” notes Lee as he pats the carsick CommonWealth Magazine reporter consolingly on the shoulder.
Back home in Taiwan, Lee first graduated from the Department of Nutrition at I-Shou University in Kaohsiung. Then he obtained a master’s degree in food science from National Taiwan Ocean University in Keelung.
What made him change track and sell feeds for fish farms? At first, Lee simply wanted to see the world. His father, who had early on worked in Taiwan-invested electronics factories in Thailand, always encouraged Lee to go abroad. Many of Lee’s graduate school classmates went on to work for Taiwanese-invested food companies in China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian countries.
“I didn’t want to stay in Taiwan; I wanted to see what kind of opportunities Asia offers, because I like to get out and explore,” remarks Lee in explaining what made him take a job with the Grobest Group, a Taiwanese-invested aquatic feed manufacturer. Lee is in charge of sales on southern Luzon, which is roughly the size of Taiwan.
Scenic Taal Lake, which fills a large volcanic caldera, is home to nearly 4,000 aqua culture cages. Seventy percent of them raise Tilapia, the most popular fish in the Philippines, while the remaining 30 percent farm milk fish. About 10 percent of Philippine fish farms use Grobest feeds, the only foreign brand among the major aquatic feedstuff brands.
Lee’s dormitory is close by, which makes it easier for him to visit the fish farms and sound out the market situation whenever he sees fit. When Lee had just arrived in the Philippines, he once worked through the night watching his customers catch fish. He got bitten by mosquitoes and contracted Dengue fever, which landed him in hospital for five days in a nearly comatose state. “What can you do about it? Just be more careful the next time!“ he says.
Using Science to Secure Market Share
Grobest is a hidden champion in the global seafood industry. Grobest was founded more than four decades ago by graduates from National Taipei Ocean University. The company’s headquarters in Taoyuan boast a high-tech R&D center, and its main products are feedstuff, feed additives and aquatic feeds. In 2015, the company registered revenue of almost NT$25 billion. In the aquatic feeds industry, Grobest counts among the most experienced in Southeast Asia. Aside from the Philippines, it also has business locations in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Philippines was Grobest’s first foray into foreign markets, and that was twenty years ago. Last year, Grobest opened a brand-new 14-hectare fish feed manufacturing plant in Tarlac, which boosted capacity tenfold, notes Grobest Feeds Philippines Inc. General Manager Lin Ku-han.
In the Philippines, Grobest has already transformed itself from a feedstuff producer into a service industry enterprise. As Lin points out, collecting payments for delivered goods causes the biggest headaches. Rather than paying their suppliers, local aquaculture business owners prefer to spend their money on luxurious homes, or they ignore instructions on proper feed formulas and ratios, which leads to less-than-ideal yields for harvested fish, which in turn means they cannot recoup their initial investment.
In order to get properly paid, Grobest developed a new strategy: They began to teach their customers how to raise fish. Grobest trained two dozen technicians, who teach the fish farmers how to monitor water quality and how to administer feeds.
Grobest’s aquatic feeds are 20-40 percent more expensive than competing products. How does the company convince buyers that its products are worth the premium? Lee explains that the two largest domestic feed brands each hold a 30 percent market share, whereas Grobest holds a share of 10 percent.
“It is only because our service differs from others that people are willing to use [our products]. Those who are able to do the math know that our price-performance ratio is the best,” Lee points out. A tilapia that is raised with ordinary feed can be harvested only after ten months, whereas tilapias that feed on Grobest aquatic feeds can be harvested in half that time. The feed conversion ratio, which is a measure of how much feed is needed to produce one kilogram of fish, stands at between 1.6 and 1.8 for Grobest feeds, whereas ordinary feedstuffs have a feed conversion ratio of between 2 and 2.3.
A 17-Member Support Team
The secret weapon behind Lee’s successful promotion of Grobest feedstuffs is a team of knowledgeable trainees. Lee supervises two salespeople, five technicians and ten trainees. How does he ensure that the company gets paid?
“We let the aquaculture farmers compare for themselves. We let them experiment with two different brands of fish feed using the same kind of larval fish raised under the same conditions. How can the fish raised with Grobest feeds already be harvested when those raised with the other brand have only grown to a weight of less than 200 grams? This is what makes the difference. If a farmer makes money he is, of course, able to pay his bills,” Lee says.
The Philippines is a country with great potential. “I hope to change the aquaculture market in the Philippines, to make it change from extensive fish farming that only cares about cost to scientific farming that emphasizes the price-performance ratio. Grobest can help them grow together with the industry, to increase their income and improve their lives,” Lee says in describing what drives his professional enthusiasm.
After all, his Philippine aquaculture adventure has only just begun.
[By Kwangyin Liu and Monique Hou/ tr. by Susanne Ganz]