MALAYSIAN COMPANY TO BUILD 400 SILOS IN THAILAND

By D. Arul Rajoo

BANGKOK, Sept 10 (Bernama) -- GGF Group, a Malaysia-Thai joint venture
company, has secured a US$200 million contract to build, own and operate 400
high-tech silos in 10 provinces.

Its Managing Director, Robert Heng, said the silos, expected to be
ready within two years, would have the capacity to store two million metric
tonnes of Thai rice.

" We are building 40 silos in each province, with a 30-year guarantee lease
by the government.

" Each silo, with a height of nine-storeys, can hold 5,000 tonnes of rice,"
he said in an interview here.

The companys signed a concession with the Thai Ministry of Commerce's Public
Warehouse Organisation which buys agriculture products from farmers and stores
them in their warehouse before selling them to millers and exporters.

GGF Thailand was appointed by the ministry as the authorised representative
to sell up to two million tonnes of rice, yearly, from the warehouse.

Heng was confident the project, the company's first in Thailand, was viable
as rice was a staple food with an ever growing market.

In fact, he said GGF, with vast experiences in worldwide marketing in
products such as palm olein and gold, had already secured contracts worth US$150
million, including supplying 300,000 tonnes of rice to Guinea.

For next year, the company is negotiating to export two million tonnes of
rice to several countries in Africa, adding that contracts have also been signed
with oil-rich Nigeria.

Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter, sold 9.56 million tonnes of the
staple food in 2007 and 10.01 million tonnes last year.

In the first six months of 2009, Thailand sold 4.72 million tonnes of rice
to overseas buyers, with about 31.4 million tonnes of paddy expected for sale
from farmers this year.

Heng said the company was also setting up rice mills in Cambodia and
Vietnam.

-- BERNAMA