San Miguel to put up $150-M brewery in the US

San Miguel Brewery Inc., the liquor unit of San Miguel Corp., on Wednesday confirmed plans to put up a brewery in Los Angeles, California in efforts to increase the company's production capacity.

In a filing on the local bourse, San Miguel confirmed earlier statements of its President Ramon S. Ang that the company will build a $150-million brewery in the United States, as well as two additional breweries in Cagayan de Oro and Iloilo City.

Each brewery will have a "capacity of 2 million hectoliters each, and expand the production capacity of all existing plants," the filing read.

According to Ang, it will spend as much as $500 million over the next two and a half years for the expansion.

The new breweries will be on top of the six located in the country — Pampanga, Metro Manila, Laguna, Negros Occidental, Cebu, and Davao.

This will also serve as an addition to the company's six international breweries — two in China, and one each in Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

San Miguel Brewery Inc. registered a net income of P4.5 billion in the first quarter of the year, up 12 percent from the P4 billion the same period in 2016. — Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/MDM, GMA News