OPPORTUNITES

Opportunities exist in all areas of agricultural production and agribusiness, ranging from primary production and food processing to providing professional services. In the primary production sector, the prospects are still bright in fruit and vegetable production, floriculture, growing of herbal and medicinal plants, feedlot production of livestock and poultry production .

However, it is in the secondary industry that we see the best prospects for agribusiness. These include processing and further processing of meat products, egg processing, grain milling, processing of fruit juices and cordial , manufacturing of nutraceuticals from medicinal' plants and herbs as well as manufacturing of veterinary medications and biologics.

In addition, the professional service sector is relatively untapped, which offers the opportunities for developing food and agricultural marketing services, agribusiness consultation, veterinary services as well as trading of agro-chemicals and veterinary supplies.

The food-processing sector is of particular interest, which offers vast opportunities for investors to value-add imported raw commodities and re export them to the ASEAN regional markets. Based on a conservative estimation of 3 percent of the 500 million populations with a per capita consumption of 5kg red meats and another 5kg of chicken meat products, the markets size presents a tall order of 75,000mt each for the two meat products.

In an actual scenario for an effluent population, the per capita consumption of beef is over 30kg and about 50kg of chicken meat. Consumption of meats is income elastic; hence, with a rising purchasing power in ASEAN countries, meat consumption is anticipated to increase.

Another untapped opportunity is in processing of eggs. Fresh eggs could be processed into semi-finished products such as dehydrated whole eggs, egg white and egg yolk, as well as liquid egg. Such processed products are easy to handle and have a long shelf life, which allow deep penetration into remote market segments, normally not accessible by fresh whole eggs. The ASEAN region has a potential of 150,000mt of processed egg products. This is estimated from 3 percent of the 500 million populations with a per capita consumption of 10kg of eggs.

The egg sector provides a best opportunity for vertical integration that includes modern layer farms of about 8 million layers, inline egg processing plants and feed milling.

With a combined broiler and layer populations of 30 million, it is feasible to establish an international-size feed mill. Under the concept of cluster development, it is possible to integrate feed milling with oil-seed extraction and flourmill operations. Hence, the development of egg processing will have a positive chain-effect on the development of crop processing industry, particularly lin the business of milling and edible oil extraction.

Likewise in other ASEAN countries, Brunei Darussalam could out-source grains and oil, seeds to sustain its milling and edible oilextraction businesses. In this regard, multinational corporations with the agro-based resources will be in a best position to take up the opportunities in milling, edible oilextraction and feed milling.

We see feed milling as a vital link that has a pulling force capable of stimulating the development of primary production, particularly in feedlot production of cattle and buffaloes . Weaned cattle and young steers could be source from Australia and locally, and grow them in feedlots. With an anticipated large volume of grain imports, the costs of feeds should be comparable with other importing countries in the ASEAN region. Thus, meat products produced in Brunei Darussalam are well positioned to compete in the regional markets, not only in terms of price but also value for money.

next page