Don't Worry, Lucky Me! Owner Says She's Working to Keep Prices Stable

Don't worry about the price of Lucky Me! going up soon as its elusive billionaire owner, Betty Ang, said she was working to keep products from the Monde Nissin group affordable to help Filipinos ride out the pandemic.

Ang, whose net worth is $1.4 billion (P69.7 billion) according to Forbes, said Monde Nissin put "significant effort" to cut costs and manage costs of raw materials. "This crisis has been an opportunity for innovation and we are tapping our research and development to take advantage," she said.

Aside from Lucky Me! noodles, Monde Nissin has a wider business that includes subsidiary MY San, the maker of SkyFlakes, Fita, and Graham crackers, as well as Mama Sita's recipe sauces and popular meat alternative Quorn.

Lucky Me! noodles could soon be made using 100% renewable energy as Monde Nissin is also taking steps to reduce its carbon footprint, she said. Monde Nissin is "very concerned" about sustainability such as reducing plastic waste packaging.

"For our part, in the Philippines, we have plans to fully offset our plastic tonnage for our biggest brands in hope to be using 100% renewable energy in our plants where available by 2022," she said in a Sept. 6 taped interview with BusinessWorld aired on Wednesday.

"We are investing in highspeed airflow technology and that will cut our oil usage, therefore dramatically reducing our carbon footprint," she said.

The Philippines is among the world's "worst offenders" of marine plastic pollution according to a study by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives or GAIA. In 2019, GAIA released a report that said Filipinos use an overwhelming amount of single-use plastic at about 60 billion sachets a year.