KUALA LUMPUR: Fraser & Neave Holdings Bhd (F&N) will continue its focus on export business growth this year after successfully expanding its business in Thailand, said chief executive officer (CEO) Lim Yew Hoe.

Lim noted that within just one year of renewed focus on exports, the food and beverage group’s Malaysian export business had grown by 31%.

Speaking to reporters after F&N’s annual general meeting yesterday, Lim said the group wants to move away from exporting original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products towards exporting its own brands. He said expanding the export business is part of the group’s plan to geographically diversify its revenue. Currently, half of F&N’s profit contribution comes from outside Malaysia.

Within Malaysia, Lim said the group is transforming its decades-old route-to-market strategy into a combined route-to-market approach to ensure greater efficiency.

“Now, a unified team will extend the full complement of our soft drinks and dairy portfolios to all F&N outlets, resulting in more business for our distributors, more products for our customers, and even better efficiencies for us,” he said.

With the transformation exercise, he said F&N expects to boost its sales up to RM300 million in the next few years. For the year ended Sept 30, 2016 (FY16), F&N generated a revenue of RM4.17 billion, up 1.5% from RM4.11 billion in FY15. Pre-tax profit rose 32.7% to RM442.9 million from RM333.8 million.

F&N chairman Tengku Syed Badarudin Jamalullail said in a statement yesterday that the group expects FY17 to be another challenging year because of the continued soft and volatile economic environment, compounded by rising commodity prices and a weakening ringgit.

But he expressed confidence that the group’s ongoing transformation will create a leaner, efficient entity.