Mindanao’s largest cold storage facility could soon rise up in this city to further boost the country's tuna industry, a top executive said.

Ritche Rivera, executive vice president and chief operating officer of RD Group of Companies, recently bared the firm’s plan of building a cold storage plant worth some P400 million. “This will be the biggest cold storage facility outside Luzon that is capable of handling 10,000 tons,” Rivera said.

Presently, San Miguel Corp. solely operates a cold storage facility in the country with a capacity of at least 15,000 tons in Luzon, he said.

Rivera said the firm is looking at three banks -Development Bank of the Philippines, Equitable-PCI Banking Corp., and Security Bank- to finance the project.

He noted that they might consider only one bank or all three to equitably share the financing requirements of the cold storage facility.

The groundbreaking ceremony of the project in Barangay Tambler is set by the end of April, he added.

Rivera said the project would mainly support the company’s tuna manufacturing unit.

The planned cold storage facility is the biggest expansion of the homegrown business empire so far this year.

Last February, the company forged a joint venture agreement with Indonesian firm P.T. Anugerah Bahari Utama for a tuna business undertaking worth US$1.8 million, or roughly P90 million.

The firm earlier confirmed expansion works on its tuna-value-added product line (chorizo, patties, springroll, among others) worth some P30 million.)