Bangkok, Thailand-based seafood importer and distributor Thammachart Seafood Retail Co. Ltd. is planning to launch a B2B platform to service restaurants.
The company, which is partly owned by Thai Union and which provides professional management services to Thai retailers for their seafood counters – while also running its own online sales – is making the move after seeing a surge in online demand and a surprising resilience in upmarket demand, despite the damage caused by the coronavirus to Thailand’s tourism sector, according to Thammachart Seafood CEO Julian G. Davies.
The new platform will cater to “independent restaurants that do not necessarily need focused in-person sales support,” Davies said.
“The F&B sector overall in Thailand has rebounded very well – particularly the high-end restaurants such as Michelin locations, with many doing better now than pre-COVID,” Davies said. “As such, our foodservice business is doing better than expected as we focus more on supplying premium products to high-end restaurants.”
However, while there are causes for optimism, the company’s F&B and foodservice business “suffered heavily” during the height of COVID, said Davies, and this has forced a repositioning of the firm’s activity towards online sales.
“We have had to adapt quickly to the new norm by conserving cash and becoming more agile,” Davies said. The firm is “actively seeking out new opportunities and focusing heavily on the online B2C business, which increased more than 200 percent in the second quarter, declined 20 to 30 percent in the third quarter and we expect a further increase in Q4.”
The company’s core business of selling seafood and seafood meals at retail counters – is improving now that strict lockdowns have been lifted in Thailand, but revenue is “still a long way below pre-COVID levels,” Davies said.
“We are focusing more on the addition of retail grab-and-go components, which is especially important for us since most of our outlets are located in supermarkets and food halls, where shoppers do not necessarily want to hang around too long,” Davies said.
Last year, the company expanded into a warehouse located in the central district of Bangkok that has storage facilities, production kitchen and a chef’s table.
“The kitchen team, headed up by a Kiwi chef, is very active in new product development for all business units, especially the online channel, where we have focused more on convenience products, for example ready meals,” Davies said.
Products listed on the company’s website now include bream, monkfish, and skate, he said.
Photo courtesy of Thammachart Seafood Retail Co. Ltd.
