Loxley anticipates sales growth of 30% this year
Suroj Lamsam, the company's chief executive, said sales of Loxley Trading Co almost doubled to 2.88 billion baht in 2021, up from 1.5 billion baht in 2019 driven by a glut of demand for consumer products such as vegetable oil, canned fish and fish sauce.
He expects the company's sales to grow by 30% this year with Cook vegetable cooking oil, Lee Kum Kee seasoning sauce and Nongpho dairy products being major sales drivers.
"Despite persistent Covid-19 outbreaks, our sales remain on the rising momentum in the first half of this year. Now that Loxley Trading sells necessary goods for life, the more cases of Covid-19 infections are reported, the more people work from home and stay more at home, spurring demand for consumer goods," he said, adding that the company is about to be appointed by 2-3 new food partners to distribute their products in the second half of this year.
In a related development, the firm yesterday signed an agreement with Nongpho Dairy Cooperative to distribute Nongpho UHT products for five years, starting from Aug 1.
Nongpho Dairy Cooperative cancelled its distribution contract with Loxley Trading in 2017 after four decades of partnership and set up a dedicated network to distribute dairy products nationwide.
The new move was meant to expand the cooperative's dairy business at a faster pace than in the past.
Mr Suroj said that under the renewed agreement, Loxley Trading will distribute Nongpho dairy products via 3,000 grocery stores across the country and Makro cash and carry stores.
In the initial stage, Loxley Trading will distribute mainly Nongpho UHT dairy products before expanding to other product categories such as pasteurised milk and yoghurt. Sales of Nongpho are estimated at about 400 million baht per year.
According to Mr Suroj, Thailand's 40-billion-baht ready-to-drink market contracted in the past three consecutive years due to the pandemic.
Prior to the outbreaks, the market saw average growth of 5-6% a year.
Apart from Nongpho, Loxley Trading has entered into a contract to be a distributor of oral care products by Jordan, a major Norwegian brand.
