S’pore’s fourth egg farm supplying Japanese eggs breaks ground after four-year delay

SINGAPORE - Singapore’s fourth egg farm, which was initially slated to become operational in 2024, will now commence production in 2028.

DoMo Farm aims to bring Japanese-grade eggs - which have a deep orange yolk and are safe to eat raw - to Singapore consumers by that year.

Due to the strict hygiene and safety standards required for egg production, the delay in the farm’s construction was to ensure that adequate biosecurity measures can be put in place without compromising the farm’s production targets, the farm’s owner ISE Foods Holdings told The Straits Times on Sept 24.

Higher construction costs due to supply chain shocks caused by the post-pandemic period and Russia-Ukraine war also contributed to the delay, said its executive director Kenneth Ho.

“We had a lot of time to do detailed (planning and design), so we are able to cap the cost from what we had budgeted in the earlier days, but with a higher production capacity now,” Ho said, adding that the farm’s delay ended up being a blessing in disguise.

“We believe that food security and commercial sustainability should go hand in hand.”

ISE Foods Holdings is a subsidiary of engineering and service solutions firm Ellipsiz, which Ho is also chief executive of.

He was speaking to ST at ISE Foods Holdings’ office, ahead of the $110 million farm’s groundbreaking at Lim Chu Kang on Sept 29. Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu was guest-of-honour.

Currently, Singapore has three egg farms - Chew’s Agriculture, Seng Choon Farm and N&N Agriculture. In 2025, they produced more than 736 million eggs, and the country’s total egg consumption that year was over 2.2 million eggs.

When operational in 2028, DoMo Farm would be able to produce about 380 million eggs a year. Ho said it plans to expand production to more than 500 million eggs a year.

When that target is reached, local eggs could account for more than half of the number of eggs consumed in 2025.

Ho said DoMo Farm’s eggs will be priced competitively against those produced by local farms, with prices ranging from $3.35 to $7 on FairPrice and Cold Storage’s websites.

Delay first reported in 2024

In 2024, ST reported that ISE’s review of biosecurity measures and development costs may entail modifications to the farm’s design or layout, which may lead to delays in the farm’s completion.

This delay was discovered through Ellipsiz’s update to the Singapore Stock Exchange in September 2023 and its half-yearly results report for FY2024.

However, details on what these measures entail were not clear then as the farm declined to comment.

Ho revealed more information in the interview, saying that the initial 10ha farming plot it was allocated in Kranji Way was too small to meet biosecurity measures while meeting the initial annual production target of 360 million eggs.

At that time, the farm - which will be the first in Singapore to have a hatchery and breeder facility to reduce reliance on imported chicks - were planned to be scattered across four locations.

They include a 10ha egg laying facility and a 0.6ha hatchery in two Lim Chu Kang sites.

It will also have a farm in Tuas to raise chicks from the hatchery into laying hens, and a parent breeder facility in Sungei Tengah to produce fertilised eggs for the hatchery.

Some of the biosecurity measures that would need to be in place include ensuring that the egg-laying houses are spaced a certain distance apart, usually the width of each house, said Ho.

This is to maintain ventilation and prevent contaminated air - such as in case of a disease outbreak in one house - from entering another house.

Trucks that transport “clean” items such as chicken feed, and those that carry “dirty” items such as manure cannot drive on the same road, he added, pointing to the farm’s need for more space.

To meet these biosecurity needs, Ellipsiz and ISE Foods Holdings requested to the Singapore Food Agency for more land, and eventually they received a new 15ha plot.

The move also consolidated the farm’s operations into two sites instead of four.

The 15ha site will host the egg-laying houses and pullet houses, where the chicks from the hatchery grow to become egg-laying hens. This site will also host a manure treatment facility that uses fermentation to turn the waste into organic fertiliser, said Ho.

The hatchery and the chicken breeder facility to produce fertilised eggs will be housed on a separate 4ha land in Neo Tiew Crescent, in DoMo Farm’s next phase post-2028.

Ho declined to reveal a specific timeline for these two facilities, and the location of the 4ha plot, adding that the focus is on completing the egg-laying facilities.

Since the hatchery will not be built by 2028, DoMo Farm’s initial eggs will be produced by hens imported from Malaysia as day-old chicks - similar to the other three farms.

Overcoming rising costs and supply chain shocks

In 2024, it was reported that ISE Foods Holdings was exploring cost-effective options for equipment and materials in the light of rising construction costs due to heightened geopolitical tensions and inflationary pressures.

Ho told ST that the farm was announced during the post-pandemic period when the Russia-Ukraine war and the resulting energy crisis occurred. That also led to economic uncertainties and supply chain disruptions.

But one silver lining of the delay was that it allowed artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to mature, allowing them to be more applicable to farming operations over the past couple years, said Ho.

For example, the egg-laying houses will have patrol robots that will run up, down and across the cages to keep an eye on the hens’ health. Each house will have 150,000 hens in six rows of 10-tiered cages.

The robots are equipped with AI-powered predictive health monitoring capabilities, heat-detecting sensors and cameras to constantly check the condition of each hen. This will allow prompt intervention to limit disease spread.

In 2022, Seng Choon Farm, one of the three egg farms, had a Newcastle disease outbreak, which caused egg production to temporarily drop.

The highly contagious H5 strain of bird flu also remains a threat as it has spread to all continents, devastating poultry farms and even infecting more than 50 species of mammals.

DoMo Farm also applied for in late-2025 and received the Singapore Food Agency’s second Agri-Food Cluster Transformation Fund.

This fund helps local farms offset the cost of energy efficient infrastructure and invest in advanced technologies. Ho did not disclose how much funding the farm received.

At DoMo Farm’s groundbreaking ceremony on Sept 29, MSE’s Fu highlighted that the farm will rely on solar power and have an automated egg warehouse, alongside climate-controlled facilities.

She said:“As a country that imports most of our food, events around the world are felt on our food shelves. Strengthening our food resilience is therefore not a matter of choice, but a matter of necessity.”