Good year for company
A LOCAL company that specialises in food processing has managed to overcome the challenges and showing an increase in its sales this year.
Food Processors Fiji Ltd general manager Vinod Prasad said the company did quite well in regards to exporting of agricultural products as it surpassed its 2018 export sales by 38 per cent.
Mr Prasad said the company recorded an increase in local sales by 30 per cent this year in comparison with 2018 sales.
However the company did note a decrease in sales from hotel and dairy shops for the year.
Despite the few decreases in sales, overall, the sales have increased by 24 per cent in the current year so far.
Mr Prasad said the company improved its corporate governance structure such as board reporting, board composition, work on the past audits, updating policies and procedures which also contributed to the improvement in company's performance.
He said the year also included improvement in quality and shelf life of their products by coming up with innovative ideas.
“The company observed growth in its production and earnings in comparison to past three years and we are striving towards further growth by value adding local products as a substitute for imports,” he said.
While things improved in some areas, there were some challenges faced by the company over the years.
Mr Prasad said short supply and inconsistent supply of agricultural produce affected company sales.
He said these agricultural produce were duruka, breadfruit, bongo chilies, dalo and cassava which had the company looking at commercial farmers to supply raw material.
According to Mr Prasad majority of the canning raw materials are imported and has increased costs and delay in cartage affected production.
Meanwhile with a high rate of competition in the local field Mr Prasad said they needed to carry out capital improvements to increase production and reduce costs to compete with the competitors.
He said there was a lot of competition in procuring agricultural products.
“Although buying of raw material and selling the final products comes with lots of tough competition, the company is filled with optimism to overcome various hurdles and perform better,” said Mr Prasad.
In its bid to beat competition and to offer new products to consumers, the company introduced new products early this year.
Mr Prasad said the company introduced some frozen vegetables namely jackfruit, bora bean, taro leaves in the local market.
“The frozen vegetables are freshly produced with low/minimum processing and capture the freshness and nutritional aspects.
“This also provides a lucrative reach to working class of people who might require fast processing of healthy foods.”
He said the products were cleaned, and prepared for ready to cook with a shelf life of two years.
Mr Prasad says the company plans to do vigorous marketing of these products after the produce at the company’s farm is ready to be processed and delivered to the stores.
He said more agricultural products in frozen packs would be introduced in the coming year with two years shelf life.
These items are currently undergoing processing in the laboratory.
In the new year the company has plans to increase its product range and improve its services to the people.
“We are targeting to increase our production, thus creating opportunity for more employment creation,” he said.
Mr Prasad said they also planned to have a semi processing centre at Batiri in the Northern Division so that collection of agricultural products from Northern farmers could be brought to Batiri for processing, packing and storage.
He said the company was also working in line with Sustainable Development Goals, such as good health and wellbeing for people and sustainable cities and communities.
“Increase in production of agricultural products would assist communities to live a healthy lifestyle and recruiting of women from rural community to do semi processing in return will provide livelihood for their family.”