Copyright channelnewsasia
JUSTIFIED INVESTMENT? Transportation can make or break a farm, say industry players. V-Plus Agritech, a farm in Lim Chu Kang that once supplied vegetables, learned this the hard way when its third-party logistics provider ended services, saying the route was no longer viable. After failing to secure another partner to transport its greens, the firm pivoted to other work. “We hovered in a no-revenue situation for a few months,” said its CEO Nelson Tan. “Now we are in the business of helping our customers build farms and maintain farms for them." The company was in talks with SAFEF about setting up a shared distribution network with other smaller farms over a year ago, but the plan did not materialise. “It's quite difficult, because every farm, the volume is different, the consistency is not there. If we were to run a route like that … just the delivery and the business model is different for every farm, so it's very difficult to justify the investment,” he added. To stay afloat, the company now sells seedlings to other farms. Looking ahead, SAFEF is also studying centralised distribution points for aquaculture at two SFA jetties at Lorong Halus and Lim Chu Kang.
