A health and lifestyle company
Jason Lin is confident that in the several years since Uni-President repositioned itself, it has successfully made the transition from a food company to a group of health companies that guide their customers in the pursuit of wellbeing and a healthier lifestyle. In addition to obtaining health-food certification from the Department of Health for many of its cooking oils, milk products, and tea drinks, Uni-President uses its wide range of retail and food-service outlets to provide health products and healthy living information to customers.
As part of its environmental action plan, Uni-President has begun reducing food miles (the distance food travels from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer) and minimizing the need for low-temperature food storage by using locally produced and in-season food and increasing the percentage of organically grown agricultural products it sells.
In addition, Uni-President has set its companies a series of goals to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, generation of waste materials, and office paper use. On the manufacturing side, the group has set packaging reduction, green purchasing and procurement, green product, and green energy use goals. The group hopes thereby to reduce its companies' environmental impact to a minimum and encourage consumers to choose its products not just because they are reasonably priced and convenient, as was already the case, but out of a greater commitment to the environment and society.
For example, in the past Uni-President used to transport individual packages of animal feed by truck to its customers, and the customers would then unload, unpack, and use the feed, which was a serious waste of material. Since the group launched its packaging reduction program, its animal feed factories have been loading the feed directly into bulk feed tanks mounted on the trucks. The feed is then unloaded directly into the customers' storage tanks. Moreover, packaged solid sugar has been replaced by a vacuum-packed sugar syrup, which customers can mix directly into food. Two steps are saved in this way: opening individual sugar packages and dissolving the sugar.
In 2007, the board of directors appointed executive vice president Alex Lo, who happens to be Kao Chin-yen's son-in-law, as president of the Uni-President group, a move that has been widely seen as a sign that he is Kao's heir apparent. Jason Lin was promoted to group CEO, but Kao remains chairman of the board and the group's kingmaker.
On becoming group president, Alex Lo said, "We have to identify needs which our customers are not aware they have." Lo's main task in his new post has been to redefine the group's corporate strategy.
For example, for its dairy products line, Uni-President has developed quality up-market products and innovative manufacturing processes that employ "high-temperature, short-time" (HTST) pasteurization. To meet today's consumers' demand for low-cholesterol foods, the group has also launched a plant-sterol milk. Even instant noodles, a product that has always sold well, raise concerns among consumers who are worried about eating too much deep-fried food. Consequently, Uni-President has invested in state-of-the-art food processing technology to introduce a healthier line of instant noodles that are not deep fried. Although they are more expensive, the group is confident that they will attract new customers.