North Star to expand into cold warehousing

MANILA, Philippines — North Star Meat Merchants Inc., a pork and meat vendor, is expanding into the last mile logistics and cold warehousing segments to service the needs of minimart chain Alfamart Inc.

North Star president and CEO Anthony Ng said the company would be providing the last mile and cold warehousing requirements of Alfamart in Northern Luzon to support the retailer’s expansion in the region.

At present, North Star operates in all SM Markets such as SM Supermarket, Hypermarket and Savemore; 7-Eleven, WalterMart and Alfamart across the Philippines, supplying frozen meat and other meat products.

This time, however, aside from supplying to Alfamart, North Star will be providing the minimart chain’s logistics and cold warehousing needs as well and not just for meat products but for other frozen goods as well.

Alfamart is the minimart chain of SM Markets, the food retail brand of SM Retail. SM Retail’s operations include food, non-food and specialty retail stores.

It is a franchised convenience store brand from Indonesia which the Sy Group through SM Retail brought to the Philippines. It has more than 17,000 outlets in Indonesia.

Last week, Alfamart announced that it has reached its 1,500th store milestone with the opening of a store in Pangasinan, which also marks its first foray in the province.

Ng said the company continues to receive strong interest from both local and foreign investors looking to acquire a stake in the company, but no decision has been firmed up, including its plan to do an initial public offering (IPO).

North Star was supposed to list in June last year, but decided to defer its planned IPO due to the market volatility at the time.

The original plan was to offer up to 392 million primary shares consisting of 360 million primary common shares and 32 million secondary common shares with up to 58 million over-allotment option shares to be offered at up to P10 per share.

North Star intended to utilize proceeds from the public offering to expand its cold chain infrastructure, improve its operating cycle efficiencies and expand its product lines and research and development work.

The company earlier expanded its Bulacan cold storage facility and the opening of the Cebu cold storage facility.