AKLAN FARMER PIONEERS IN CAMOTE CHIPS MAKING
MANILA, January 28, 2005 (STAR) By Rose Dela Cruz The - Camote chips, anyone? Why not? An Aklan-based businessman has found camote (sweet potato) chips a very good and nutritious business, which has caught steady patronage of his townsfolk and other consumers frequenting trade fairs especially those of the Philfoodex.Peter Alcedo of Aklan, Visayas made his maiden commercial sale of his camote chips in Feb. 2003 and has since been a regular vendor in other food fairs in Metro Manila. In fact, it was during his Philfoodex exposure that many Chinese traders bought by bulk his camote chips and have since been retailing it in their stores.
At the Philfoodex fair that Alcedo first participated in 2003, he sold not just camote chips but also ampao (in time for the Chinese lunar year), banana flour (for baking and catsup making, which his father, Rustico Martirez Alcedo of Aklan started in the fifties), banana chips, pinasugbo and other native delights.
Rustico established the Alcedo Confectioneries with 7 centavos capital in 1954 precisely to help out his farmer-neighbors find a market for their produce. His first produce was of the sweetened banana, a popular Visayan delicacy called pinasugbo. Then he developed banana chips. In the course of his operations, he was able to invent banana flour, which found a ready market among catsup and sauces makers. Unfortunately, the technology was pirated by a banana plantation in Mindanao and then the banana flour was sold exclusively to a leading catsup manufacturer up to this time. Before the plantation from Mindanao was able to get the catsup company as its client for the banana flour, his father was supplying the catsup company with the flour for P6.75 a kilo as against the plantation’s price of P4.50 a kilo. This is why they lost the account.
Peter Alcedo first ventured in puto/kutsinta using the company name, Alcedo & Sons, producing and selling these items principally in the wet markets and other retail outlets of the Visayas. He was in this business from 1969 to 1991.
In 1994, he took over and resurrected a fledgling company that his father founded after finishing his commerce degree at the Aklan College. And since the machineries and facilities of his father were still intact, the capital investment required to make a go of the company was small. Actually, he said, he put in only P150 worth of cooking oil, sugar and other ingredients and produced what his father used to produce. He then had the company renamed, in 1997, this time to Alcedo Food Processing.
In 2001, he again registered the company with the Bureau of Domestic Trade to Alcedo Food Industries to ensure flexibility in its operations and product lines, which were otherwise limited to confectioneries under its original name.
Peter carried on with the traditional pinasugbo, being more aggressive in marketing this product even in the airports for tourists in Aklan and for balikbayans at the international airports.
In 2002, he ate a snack pack of potato chips and wondered if the same process could be done with the local sweet potato (camote). So he started trying out chipping the rootcrop into fine pieces, dehydrating it then frying it after dipping into white sugar. He then had his neighbors try out the new product. When there was spontaneous acceptance for it, he was quite sure this would click in the local market.
But current operations are not that rosy what with the rapidly increasing prices of raw materials (principally sugar, flour and bananas); the erratic supply of saba (bananas for chips and sweet potato) and the high cost of energy and water, among others.
For him to be able to expand his operations, Peter would require a loan of P1 to P1.5 million to mechanize his camote chips operations to meet the market requirement for the product. Actually, he needs to get the loan very fast otherwise competition might be able to catch up on him.
With the loan, he can also now get into contract farming with the neighboring farms to ensure steady supply of raw materials. But he needs certified seeds of bananas and camotes to ensure that his operations would have a steady and stable supply of raw materials at the time they are needed most.
But for this he would need help from the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry to give or sell to him at subsidized rates camote and banana seeds to plant in his neighbors’ farms.
And his final wish is that his three children– two of them based in America as nurses– come home and help him out in the company instead of being white collar laborers in a foreign land. But for him to convince them to come home and help out, till they take over the company, he has to show them how progressive and expanded the firm has become.
Reported by: Sol Jose Vanzi
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