Survival and Opportunities for Thai Food and Beverage Industry in COVID-19 Crisis
Survival and Opportunities for Thai Food and Beverage Industry in COVID-19 Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every business and industry. Even food and beverage groups which are the important factors for living, there is no exception. However, Thailand’s continuous implementation of policy and the mapping out of strategy on being the Kitchen of the World have constantly kept food and beverage manufacturers on alert to adjust and develop their technologies and production processes that a variety of products have been produced and made available with their qualities able to be well maintained to the extent of being acceptable by world markets consequently resulting in the Thai food and beverage industry throughout the past 10 years to still grow averagely at 1% annually, at least, which eventually made Thailand being rated in the 11th place of the world’s food exporters and the 2nd place in Asia. Even in the wake of the current COVID-19 crisis, the Thai food and beverage industry which is robust still has a chance in the crisis, as well.
Mr. Visit Limluecha, Chairman of Food Processing Industry Club, The Federation of Thai Industries and President of Thai Food Processors’ Association gave his account on the Thai food and beverage industry situation following the webinar with Informa Market, the organizer of ProPak Asia, on “Thailand Food Situation in COVID-19” at the moment that, the COVID-19 crisis has caused the products in the food and beverage groups to change from the normal situation. Nevertheless, the instant foods, canned seafood, canned fruits including sauces have become the well-grown food groups during the lockdown period because everyone is trying to hoard foods for consumptions due to their uncertainty in the government’s Lockdown Policy which varies from country to country.
Thailand is considered to have a great advantage over the other countries in food and beverage productions. We are able to produce our own raw materials, including vegetables, fruits, livestock and seafood. Even though some raw materials are required to be imported, yet, the quantity is still considered to be less than what we produce by ourselves. Under the normal situation, the domestic food and beverage consumptions including those of the tourists account for the value of approximately 2 trillion Baht per year and the export value of 1 trillion Baht. But meanwhile, the number of tourists has declined consequently resulting in food products in the group sold in the restaurants, hotels or the souvenir products to decline proportionately, as well. The solution to cope with this situation is that the entrepreneurs and manufacturers must make the adjustments by returning to produce more goods for responding to people on the part of the consumers together with making change in the sales channels to be the direct sales more easily delivered to consumers.
Nowadays, the product direct sales to consumers by way of online channels whether e-commerce and application systems are convenient. COVID-19 situation is considered yet to be the great ever driving force to make people familiar with these things faster. Thus, even after this situation has returned to normal, the people behaviors on the consumptions and the purchases of goods will accordingly change. The entrepreneurs must therefore keep pace with the technology and changes in consumer behaviors, including things that cannot afford to be overlooked, the packaging, of course, which must be chosen suitably for use, to be able to preserve product quality for a long duration, convenient for transportations, safe and to build confidence in the consumers on the matter of the sterilizations.
On the part of the entrepreneurs and the product manufacturers, they must adapt themselves for going into the 4.0 era faster, with the applications of the innovation, technology, more efficient machineries being more automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems. However, the main problem expected to arise is the labor issue that the use has a trend to decline. The domestic labor birth rate is low and has entered into the situation of the advanced age. While labors from neighboring countries will drop due to the difficulty in getting in and out of the country following the measures to prevent the spread of the disease. Moreover, the investments having begun to spread to many countries in the region have given these workers more opportunities to work in their home countries. Yet, the advantage, of course, is that at present, the machine technology is cheaper and easily accessible by entrepreneurs which, in this connection, Thailand has imported machineries mainly from 3 countries: namely; China, Japan and Germany, with a combined proportion of around 50-70%. These machine technologies not only are instrumental to solve the labor problems but also the mechanism to enable the entrepreneurs to upgrade their production efficiencies and standards, increase the production quantities, ensure that the products are safe and sterilized, energy is saved and that the production costs can be well controlled to the extent of being able to compete in a wider scale.
Therefore, the survival path of food and beverage industry business in Thailand is that we must maintain our resourceful advantage which we have had more than many countries that need to import foods of over 90% or 95% for some countries because they cannot cultivate plants or raise livestock. The situation of COVID-19 pandemic has made it obviously clear that, in the end, human beings do not need anything more than survival, non-infection, having food to eat while waiting for medications, for vaccines. Therefore, the importance of foods today is not a high-valued, over expensive or much innovative foods, but, a basic or even a ready to cook one. At the mean time, people are striving to live economically because they are not sure about the future. Therefore, the applications of innovations and technologies in food and beverage production process will be able to respond to the basic needs and quantity of the world population consumptions sufficiently. If entrepreneurs should be able to adjust themselves rapidly, it would indeed be an opportunity for their food and beverage business in the crisis and the truly genuine way out of their business.
