Scaling Berli Jucker’s retail empire – daughter of Thai beer billionaire seeks growth outside home country

Inside Asia’s family empires: How they are transforming to seize the next stage of growth

[SINGAPORE] A Thai diversified corporation with more than a century of history in the country sees its future growth drivers outside Thailand.

Berli Jucker (BJC) recently completed the acquisition of MM Mega Market, a wholesale retailer, in Vietnam earlier this year for 22.5 billion baht (S$880 million). BJC’s CEO Thapanee Techajareonvikul said the acquisition would allow BJC to take a more active role in growing the MM Mega Market chain, especially after BJC’s planned initial public offering for its own wholesale retailer Big C has not materialised.

“We want to... expand the opening of stores. We have a plan on opening another 24 stores over the next five years,” Thapanee said in a conversation with The Business Times at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. MM Mega Market currently has 30 stores across Vietnam. 

She explained that the MM Mega Market Chain’s business has synergies with BJC’s own business segments. For example, BJC makes a wide range of household consumer goods. Some of these goods are currently sold to Big C, the wholesale retailer in Thailand that is owned by BJC. Managing another wholesale retailer could potentially expand BJC’s downstream opportunities. 

The other reason is that Thapanee sees Vietnam as a growth market that BJC needs to be more active in, hence the move to purchase MM Mega Market from the TCC Group, which BJC is a part of. 

“Vietnam is in everyone’s mind. Why not be there as BJC? We want to be more aggressive,” Thapanee said. 

The present day Berli Jucker is a massive corporation with operations in retail, manufacturing, packaging and distribution across South-east Asia. The corporation also owns the Big C hypermarket chain in Thailand and Laos. 

BJC’s history in Thailand traces back more than a century to two Swiss merchants, Albert Jucker and Henry Sigg, who established the trading house that eventually became Berli Jucker in 1882. The company first engaged in rice milling, mining and shipping, before expanding to manufacturing, packaging and distribution after World War II. BJC was one of the first 10 companies to list on the Thai stock exchange on Apr 30, 1975.

Thapanee’s father, Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, acquired a majority stake in the corporation in 2001.

A family affair

The 49-year-old Thapanee is the fourth child of Charoen, the founder and chairman of TCC Group. Forbes indicated that Charoen has a net worth of US$11.2 billion, and is the fourth-richest person in Thailand. The TCC Group’s businesses include food and beverage, real estate, insurance and consumer manufacturing. 

All five children oversee different aspects of TCC’s sprawling empire. 

The eldest, Atinant Bijananda, 53, serves as the vice-chairman of the executive board of Thai Group Holdings, the finance and insurance arm of TCC Group.

The second in the family, Wallapa Traisorat, 52, heads Asset World Corporation, an integrated lifestyle real estate and development group, overseeing the hospitality real estate segment and managing a portfolio of hotels and tourism-focused retail properties.

The third child and the oldest male, Thapana Sirivadhanabhakdi, 51, heads ThaiBev, which produces a range of beverages including one of Thailand’s most popular beers: Chang Beer.

Thapanee heads BJC, which was bought by Charoen in 2001 when the group was looking to bring glass bottle making capacity in-house. BJC’s glass bottle making facilities in turn support ThaiBev.

Thapanee’s younger brother Panote Sirivadhanabhakdi, 48, heads Frasers Property and is in charge of real estate development, which includes residential projects and office complexes. 

Frasers Property and ThaiBev have the most exposure outside Thailand among the five companies. Berli Jucker’s revenue still relies heavily on Thailand while Asset World Corporation and Thai Group Holdings have a primarily Thai focus.

“The growth strategy for BJC and Big C is international expansion, and we plan to have 30 per cent of our portion (of revenue) to be outside Thailand by 2030. Right now it’s about 10 per cent,” Thapanee said. 

She explained that increasing revenue outside Thailand will further help BJC and TCC Group, as a whole, diversify its sources of income. The sentiment around Thailand’s economy, compared to some of the other economies in South-east Asia, also meant it makes sense for BJC to look for growth outside its home base. 

Expanding its retail business outside Thailand would allow BJC to optimise some of its factories in the region through expansion of downstream opportunities. Apart from Thailand, BJC currently has manufacturing bases in Vietnam and Malaysia for South-east Asia. 

Thapanee said the company is focused on Vietnam at the moment due to the optimism over the country’s economy that includes a rising middle class. 

Expanding retail, through MM Mega Market, would also allow BJC to create value for its manufacturing as MM Mega Market would serve as a platform to sell BJC’s own-brand household products.

Outside of retail expansion, Thapanee is looking at expanding BJC’s range of food products, and strengthening its logistics operations to allow it to tap into more segments of the healthcare supply chain.

“We have a joint venture with DHL for Thailand and Vietnam. It comes at the right time as with this war, supply chain, logistics and transportation is pretty important,” Thapanee said, in reference to the Iran war which broke out in February 2026.

Her strategies for expanding BJC’s already diversified operations comes as she marks her third year as chief executive of the company. 

But while she has been its CEO for only three years, Thapanee has long been exposed to BJC’s operations, including having played a role when her father took a majority stake in Berli Jucker in 2001. She had just graduated with a degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While waiting to enter Harvard for her Masters in Business Administration, she was busy with factory visits and engaging with key partners over the acquisition. 

More than 20 years on from then, Thapanee sees growing BJC’s business as part of a wider mission to ensure the continuity and expansion of the TCC Group’s empire and to transition smoothly from her father to her generation. 

Her 82-year-old father initiated a major restructuring in May last year by transferring equally to his five children the shareholdings of BJC, Asset World, and Thai Group Holdings. The move was seen as a part of a long-term succession plan to pass on his business empire to the next generation. 

Transitioning from her father to her generation is something Thapanee keeps in mind. Her elder brother Thapana is the executive chairman of the TCC Group, though she declined to answer publicly about successors. She said the siblings are working together and supporting each other to ensure a smooth handover when the time comes, and that her international expansion strategies with BJC are part of that agenda. 

“The benefit to the group, I think, is that international expansion captures all the opportunities in South-east Asia and diversifies the risk. I think the world is getting smaller,” Thapanee said.