Chief operations officer Boonchai Kowpanich, who oversees the newly-opened unit, says it needs a third of the 3,000 who are employed at the old factory. Traditional labor-intensive production, whereby seaweed is manually fried (or roasted) in woks, has been replaced here with automation, using imported Korean and Japanese machines and some equipment that was developed in-house. Adjacent to Taokaenoi's 7-acre complex, is, ironically, a PepsiCo plant producing Lay's potato chips. It is located in an industrial park 47 miles north of Bangkok, close to the historic city of Ayutthya, the former capital of the Kingdom of Siam. He's used half the $42 million IPO proceeds to build a new factory that will produce exclusively for export. Unfazed, Tob is in the throes of doubling Taokaenoi's annual production capacity to 12,000 tons. In the American market, as in China, Taokaenoi will have to fight it out with earlier Korean and Japanese arrivals. 'The next stop has to be the U.S., as that's the world's biggest snacking market,' he says. 'The IPO price hadn't fully factored in the China play,' says Nantika Wiangphoem, an analyst at Bangkok securities firm DBS Vickers, who tracks the company.Īt his company's Bangkok headquarters, Tob, wearing a solid black T-shirt, the color preferred by his icon Steve Jobs, admits to eyeing an even bigger play: to make Taokaenoi a global brand.

Analysts say the post-IPO buzz around Taokaenoi was also sparked by rising sales in China, the company's biggest overseas market, which contributes more than a third to revenues.

Tao kae noi seaweed tom yum ingredients