DMCI Chairman and President Isidro ConsunjiThe Manila Times | 13 October 2025DMCI to focus on farming and renewables, says CEO
By Earl John Alfaro
DMCI Holdings Inc. will be focusing its next phase of growth on agriculture and renewable energy as part of a strategy to build sustainable rural communities, its top executive said last Friday.
Chairman and President Isidro Consunji said that in the next decade, DMCI and the Consunji family would be focusing on converting idle land into productive farms, expanding off-grid and renewable power, and encouraging private investment in agriculture, a sector long neglected by capital markets.
“Our goal is to develop marginal land, which is denuded, logged-over land, where there are very few economic activities, and turning idle land into real livelihoods,” he told a Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines conference.
Consunji said the family's agriculture business was developing a 6,000-hectare African palm oil plantation in Candoni, Negros Occidental, with a plan to expand to 12,000 hectares within five years.
In July, in partnership with Marubeni Corp. and UP Los Baños, the group announced that it aimed to plant 1.5 million trees across 15,000 hectares for carbon credits, with potential expansion of the reforestation effort to 100,000 hectares.
Combined, the projects are expected to employ about 2,500 workers and include smallholders through a “plant-now-pay-later” program that allows farmers join the supply chain.
“We intend that small farmers also benefit,” Consunji said. “We give them the seeds today, and they start paying five years from today when they start harvesting.”
In energy, he said that DMCI was laying the groundwork for a transition to renewables in its core business areas.
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On Semirara Island, where the group operates the country’s largest coal mine, DMCI plans to develop wind and solar projects with a potential combined capacity of over 2,000 megawatts, which could eventually connect to Mindoro’s power grid.
“Hopefully we can connect Semirara to Mindoro so even if coal is gone, we’d still have renewable energy. That’s one of our dreams,” Consunji said.
The company is also evaluating a new baseload plant in Palawan to support growing demand and further stabilize off-grid power supply.
Consunji, who is preparing to step back from active management, said the group’s long-term strategy is to ensure its businesses remain profitable while generating shared prosperity in rural areas.
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“For rural development to be sustainable, our businesses have to be profitable,” he said. “I hope other organizations would replicate what we’re doing, because that’s where a lot of people are still very poor.”
DMCI shares rose 12 centavos, or 1.06 percent, to P11.42 apiece on Friday.
