Thai Union Group has a history of successfully navigating through various crises, such as the financial crisis, EU’s yellow card on IUU fishing, and the recent Covid-19 crisis that led to high inflation and interest rates. Despite these challenges, the company has consistently bounced back and resumed growth.
In its latest move, the company unveiled its Strategy 2030, outlining two crucial transformation projects, namely Project Sonar and Project Tailwind. These initiatives are expected to play a pivotal role in driving the company towards a 10% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in net sales value, ultimately aiming to reach a milestone of US$7 billion by the year 2030.
On November 11, 2024, Thai Union Group PCL announced Strategy 2030, its ambitious roadmap to achieve significant growth. This includes boosting net sales growth to US$7.0 billion by 2030 from US$3.9 billion in 2024, and increasing earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) by 100 percent from approximately US$400 million to US$700-US$800 million within the next six years. Strategy 2030 is pivotal to the Company’s vision of becoming the world’s leading marine health and nutrition company.
“The world today faces unprecedented shifts, from geopolitical pressures and rising inflation to rapidly evolving consumer demands. In the face of these challenges, Thai Union is seizing the opportunity to turn the tides and achieve greater success. With a bold vision to become the world’s leading marine health and nutrition company grounded by our purpose of Healthy Living, Healthy Oceans, we’re setting our sights on achieving US$7.0 billion revenue and doubling EBITDA by 2030,” said Thiraphong Chansiri, President and Chief Executive Officer at Thai Union Group.
Thai Union’s Strategy 2030 is built on three strategic pillars, targeting focused business categories to drive growth in revenue, gross margins, and EBITDA. These pillars – leveraging both organic and non-organic growth to deliver sustained, long-term growth – are:
Revitalizing the core: Focuses on primary business categories such as branded ambient, chilled and feed, to continue to generate the cash flow needed for Thai Union to expand into new growth areas.
Driving the next wave of growth: Focuses on faster growing business categories such as pet care, frozen, culinary, and ingredients that Thai Union believes will continue to drive profitable growth through 2030 and beyond.
Exploring new frontiers: Focuses on exploring new ideas and technologies such as aquaculture ecosystems and alternative proteins, to fuel Thai Union’s growth in the future.
“Strategy 2030 is more than just a roadmap. It’s our catalyst for sustained, long-term growth. Built on three strategic pillars, Strategy 2030 sets forth ambitious goals for Thai Union to achieve over the next six years, leveraging both organic and inorganic growth opportunities. For our strategy to generate true value, we have identified critical enablers we must execute in order to lay strong foundations for continued success. Equally crucial are the two transformation programs we are announcing today, which outline clear plans to support Strategy 2030 and turn our ambitions into reality,” said Paul Herholz, Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer at Thai Union Group.
To achieve Strategy 2030, Thai Union has outlined six critical enablers, which include aligning the organization and driving talent initiatives, driving cost focus, optimizing the manufacturing network and driving strategic procurement, stepping up on digital capabilities, leveraging innovation, and commercializing sustainability.
Two key transformation initiatives sit under the Strategy 2030 umbrella: Project Sonar and Project Tailwind, which will work in tandem to support the broader goals of Strategy 2030, ensuring that all efforts contribute to a cohesive and unified plan for the future.
Project Sonar is a Group transformation program which provides a solid foundation for long-term growth by addressing the critical enablers for Strategy 2030, while Project Tailwind focuses on accelerating growth in the PetCare category.
With Project Sonar, Thai Union targets to achieve approximately US$75 million in annual savings from 2026 onwards, approximately 40 percent of which will be reinvested to further strengthen and grow the business. Project Sonar will aim to create a robust operating model aligned with Strategy 2030, building new capabilities in procurement and operations for optimum efficiency and scale, as well as stepping up digital capabilities to further support business growth and gear up for a full digital transformation.
A category-specific transformation plan in the fast-growing PetCare category, Project Tailwind aims to achieve an uplift of approximately US$50 million in annualized operating profit (OP) for the PetCare business from 2027 onwards. This will be achieved by establishing insights-driven commercial practices, while building capabilities and boosting productivity in procurement and manufacturing. While Project Tailwind will focus on driving accelerated organic growth, i-Tail Corporation Public Company Limited (SET: ITC) will aim for further growth through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), with a goal of tripling revenue to US$1.5 billion by 2030.
Thai Union already initiated steady progress to deliver on Strategy 2030 and achieve its targets. Both transformation projects are already launched, marked by key initiatives such as a newly established Innovation Hub in the Netherlands, increased marketing investments to boost the continued leadership of the Group’s market-leading ambient brands globally, an optimization of manufacturing operations, and expansion of the Group’s digital team and capabilities globally.
At the closing remarks, Mr. Chansiri noted that after a brief hiatus of M&A, it is now back on the Thai Union’s agenda. With the Strategy 2030, the company is expecting to drive gross profit margin from an estimate of 19% this year to 21-23% by 2030 with an operating margin increasing from 5.6% to 8%. Notably, the contribution of PetCare and value added business to Net Sales Value is expected to increase from 15% to 25-30% by the same targeted year.
As for the concerns of potential global trade tariffs that the President-elect Donald Trump could bring along with the Trump’s Administration 2.0, Thai Union’s president was confident on the company’s competitiveness in the global market as the tariffs would apply to other markets as well. Additionally, the lower tax rates that Trump would implement should benefit Thai Union’s corporations in the U.S.
