CALBAYOG CITY – The construction of a cold storage facility in this city is now in the go as it broke ground on July 6.
The construction of the said facility is an indication of the company’s confidence of the city’s economy, Arturo Yan, owner of the Glacier Refrigeration Services Corp., said.
The company has invested P50 million for the construction of their storage facility located in Barangay Pagbalican.
“The scale is not that huge like in Metro Manila but then again, we need to put investment outside Metro Manila, which is part of our corporate responsibility to put investment in emerging areas like Leyte and Samar,” Yan told members of the media in an interview.
The construction of the storage facility is expected to be completed by October this year. It will open with a 500 pallet space that could store marine and agriculture products.
Yan said that they chose Calbayog City because it is a strategic place to become a distribution hub of key industry players of processed foods, marine, poultry and meat products and for providing support to local production of perishable products that includes agricultural products.
“But we may also expand our investment to other parts of Samar province like in Catbalogan City depending to the decision of our partners,” he said.
Yan added that with the presence of cold storage facility, this will encourage more local entrepreneurs to create products and brands that can be supplied outside the region and even export abroad.
The investment of Glacier in Calbayog City was welcomed by Samar Rep. Edgar Mary Sarmiento citing that it will provide employment and local producers of the city to have wider markets of their products.
“This facility will help our fishermen to maintain the quality of their catch marine products thus it will not affect the price when they sell it,” he said.
Existing cold storage facilities of Glacier are located in Metro Manila, Bicol Region and Panay Island.
Also present during the ground-breaking were Chino Villanueva, corporate planning officer of Glacier Samar, and former congressman Mel Senen Sarmiento. (ROEL T. AMAZONA)
