As discussed, two of the main agenda in any Board Meeting should at least include branding as a strategy to boost sales and strategizing to go overseas for business expansion.

A good example is the recent announcement by F& N’s CEO Tan Ang Meng pertaining to the aforesaid two subjects:

Branding:

• to consolidate their products under one F&N Brand. The objective of a common brand is to enable the more well recognized and popular products to leverage the smaller, lesser-known products and also to ensure that customers are not loosing sight of the brand as F&N has too many products in its portfolio and the launch of a new corporate F&N Brand to grow its food and beverage (F&B) business. The new corporate brand will create better public awareness.
  Incidentally, the group would invest over RM2mil in the coming months on advertisements, billboards and marketing campaigns to promote the new brand image. 

Overseas expansion:

• F&N’s group already had a strong presence locally. It is quite large in Malaysia and Singapore and would want to expand overseas to be more geographically based to cut volatility in one particular country
• The group already had a strong presence in Thailand following the acquisition of the Nestle dairy business last year and would be focusing its sights on Indochina.Targeted countries like Laos,Vietnam,Myanmar and Cambodia. Revenue from overseas business had grown steadily over the past couple of years. Two years ago, foreign business contributed about 10% to group revenue. Currently, it contributes about 35%. The rationale for regional expansion was because the growth of the F&B business was dependent on the growth of the population. The population in the region is more than 10 times the Malaysian population, which means more mouths to feed and more sales for F&N’s products
  (The Star Malaysia-26/3/08)

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