Thesis (Master in Management) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, 2023

Syntek Agri Bio Corporation is a sister company of Santos Land Development Corporation. Santos Land assumed to operations of Iluminada Farms Incorporated in 2015, Iluminada Farms is an egg layer poultry farm established in the 1980s. Santos Land then reincorporated it in 2017. In 2019 Syntek moved its farm operations from Davao City to Panabo City, moving to a more high-tech farm with twice the number of birds and production as large a parcel of land with room for improvement and other opportunities. The current economic and geopolitical climates have hit the poultry layer industry hand. Rising prices of corn and soya have driven up the cost of feeds by over 40%. Erratic weather patterns and avian diseases have increased the mortality rate of the birds, driving down the production efficiency of Syntek’s farm. Importation costs drive up the price of repairs and preventive maintenance of Syntek’s equipment. However, there is an increasing global demand for chicken manure-based organic fertilizer which Syntek is looking into producing. The external environment summarized in the previous paragraph has led to Syntek exhibiting poor financial performance since its inception in 2017, but especially so in 2021 and 2022. Production efficiencies have teetered between 76% to 83%, which is within industry standards but a mortality rate of almost 5%, which is 3% higher than industry standards. With tis layer house designs are not suited to Panabo city’s climate, which is also another reason for the high mortality rate aside from avian diseases. However, it can sell almost all of its egg production, a 95% figure and the remaining 5% is due to breakage and wastage, and customer reviews have cited good quality products as the reason for their loyalty. As for human resources, Syntek has a highly motivated and skilled staff with a lot of industry experience and technical expertise. Thus, Syntek’s strategies should revolve around the rehabilitation of its layer house designs, and improvement of its manure processing capabilities. To do this, it has to improve its data recording and product development abilities and marketing by improving its processes and training its employees, as well as making improvements to its farm facilities. The strategy generation tools used—the SWOT matrix, Grand Strategy Matrix, and IE Matrix all indicate that product development and market penetration should be Syntek’s primary strategic options. And the implementing programs reflect this. Indicated in the plan is the rehabilitation of layer house 1 to 3 to incorporate the design improvements of the new layer house designs for layer house 9 and 10—m which have been modified to include more analog means of production to reduce costs to improve production efficiency. It also indicates the need to purchase or construct additional facilities to improve manure processing to roughly 80% of all produced manure, where currently Syntek can only process about 11% of product manure. This will also reduce the biological burden on the surrounding environment leading to more sustainable land use in the future as total waste dumping is decreased. Finally, the development of standards operating procedure manuals are indicated in the plan to facilitate the easier onboarding of new hires, as well as the transition of management should it be required. These will all be monitored through a yearly report which will be analyzed by analyzing the variance between actual project completion and projected project completion. If need be, a thematic analysis of more qualitative data can be done to supplement and contextualize the quantitative data gathered from these reports.