The confession for the billionaire who built a “crocodile emperor” and won millions of them

This would probably be a sentence through which we could describe the philosophy of the man called.

It's about the man whose company dominates the renovation market in the Philippines with 57 stores across the country and who was on a good track to make a success of another business when he decided to try something different, Telegrafi notes.

It had all started with a poultry farm in 1989 as a weekend event for Belo. But a moment came when he had to understand how to deal with chickens that were no longer able to lay eggs.

So in the mid - 1990s, he thought that with these species of chickens he fed tigers before deciding on crocodiles.

So he bought about 1,200 of them over three years after learning that a crocodile - storage farm in the province of Palawan was seeking to sell some of its shares.

My plan was simply to have a farm with a small number of fresh animals and eggs for personal consumption”, Belo said in an interview in Manila. But one thing led to another and we brought crocodiles to feed chickens we didn't need”.

Today he grows his races and owns about 23,000 of the semi-water reptiles for whom he has found the most profitable uses.

This is because luxury fashion and meat marks are supplied with their skins in a variety of food products, including Hungarian sausage and a local dish known as Sisig.

Food products are sold under the name of the dundee brand.

Belo now has two crocodile farms, one for food on 10 hectares, and another that is seven times larger, for the collection and management of animal wastes, Telegraphed.

The venture has about 800,000 chickens and 5,000 pigs, and it sells about 2,000 to 3,000 crocodile skins annually for $200 to 250 pieces.

It is difficult to turn this into a larger degree because food can be very expensive and there are issues of breeding affecting skin quality”, Belo said. “You are not allowed to bring crocodiles from other countries to regulate the country's”.

The crocodile's skin price has dropped due to the excess supply caused by the weaker demand for luxury products by Chinese consumers, in which the country has half of the global demand for <x0ndivels high” bags.

It's hard to raise this in a larger industry because we don't have breeding and now there's a limit for the” market, Belo said.

Still, he's doing good. The Wilcon company is prospering amid a construction boom involving the country under pressure from President Rodrigo Duterte “build, build, Build”.

The value of construction projects increased by 22% in the second quarter from a year ago to $133 billion ($2.4 billion), with residential developments measuring more than half the total, according to the Statistics Authority in the Philippines.

Manila-based Wilcon shares have increased 41% this year, exceeding the 2.8% advance for 262 companies in Philipne Stock Exchange.

This has even put Bello among the world's billionaires.

He and his family control two-thirds of Wilcon, giving him a net value of about $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Miliarders Index.

Bloomberg's assessment is the most likely “conservative” because it is based solely on information available to the public, said Jean Alger, head of Wilcon's investors' relations, who refused to elaborate Belo's wealth.

Wilcon targets middle-income and high-income housing owners who regulate everything, from plumbing installations to plates and taps.

But who's Belo?

After finishing high school, Belo studied engineering at the University of Santo Thomas in Manila while working evenings at a construction supply company partially owned by his father.

In 1977 he finally opened his shop in a space no larger than a one - bedroom apartment and worked for decades to build a company that is now a major retailer in the Philippines's renovation market.

As Belo continues to go to the office five days a week, he now supervises business as the honourary “chairman of” as day operations conduct his three children.

This has given him “more time to relax”, and it will probably cost him more time to do other jobs, such as growing crocodiles.