Insurance challenge
Old buildings not insured, says Singh
PACIFIC Fishing Company Ltd (PAFCO) has revealed the old buildings are not insured for the damage caused by cyclones.
This was revealed by the chief executive officer Bhan Singh at the submissions to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the 2016 to 2017 Audit Report on Statutory Authorities on Thursday.
“In terms of insurance the difficulty we have insuring buildings for cyclones, the buildings are not cyclone certified,” he said.
“We don’t have engineers certificate for the buildings.”
Mr Singh added the new buildings were cyclone certified, these held the cold storage units however it was the old buildings which they couldn't get certification for.
“We don’t have cyclone insurance for the old buildings — no insurance company will give us cyclone insurance which do not have an engineer certificate.
“It’s not a risk to the employees or to the premises but if there is a cyclone and the building is damaged then insurance cover is not there for these buildings.”
According to Mr Singh Tropical Cyclone Winston had resulted in PAFCO ceasing its operations for eight weeks as they had sustained major damage to the factory which was mainly to the electrical controls and equipment.
This was because of powerful sea surges which resulted in the company claiming insurance for the damaged equipment only.
Mr Singh said PAFCO had continuously upgraded plant equipment in year 2019 and 2020 as they were also investing in two new pre-cooker machines.
“We have six precookers, the precookers have been there for more than 20 years now. We are replacing two with stainless steel type modern pre-cookers that would cost us about $2 million so that’s for 2019 and 2020.”
He said the company had plans to replace two more pre-cookers by the end of 2020 together with the burners too.
“So six new pre-cookers are in our capital improvement plan, we have improvements in the building as well. We have a lot of effects of salt water on the buildings and we have been investing in the buildings as well.”
He said they had recently built a new cold storage which cost the company $16m it was opened last year.
“That has replaced the old cold storage which had been in use for more than 20 years and is now redundant.”