Local two thrive in new jobs
NOTHING succeeds like success, so says the old adage.
And never was it more true than in the case of Vijay Nahabir and Samu Mucunabitu and the company they work for. Both Vijay and Samu are locals.
An article published in The Fiji Times on August 13, 1976, reported that the duo had left good jobs to join Lysaght Brownbuilt Industries (Fiji) Ltd.
Both had forged ahead in an impressive way. Vijay doubled sales of the company’s products. Samu doubled the number of men under his supervision in the workshop.
And Lysaght Brownbuilt Industries doubled in one year their output of steel cabinets, office lockers, shelving and various space-saving storage facilities.
Vijay, 31, took over from an expatriate sales manager less than two years ago, only a year after becoming his assistant. Until joining Lysaght Brown-built, he had been a draughtsman in the Fiji Government’s Geological Survey Department.
He adapted to salesmanship with a case that impressed his new employers and he still found that his abilities as a draughtsman came in very useful.
His job had him travelling around Fiji and to neighbouring countries, mostly Samoa and Tonga.
Among his recent orders were $20,000 worth of shelving and a $15,000 compactus, a Lysaght Brownbuilt saver of office storage space.
He was recently negotiating four or five more shelving contracts each of which was likely to run into several thousand dollars.
Peter Hellwig, manager of Lysaght Brownbuilt Industries in Fiji, said: “He’s a real go-getter.”
Samu, 33, came to Lysaght Brownbuilt Industries 20 months ago, leaving a job with another firm which he had held for eight years. The biggest change, he said, was to work with steel instead of wood.
Lysaght Brownbuilt sent him to Australia to learn the latest methods of die-setting, steel fabrication and assembly of components in their factory at Sutherland, New South Wales. He learned quickly and caught the eye of Reg Stafford, New South Wales manager of Brownbuilt Ltd.
When he started as workshop foreman at Lysaght Brownbuilt’s factory in Samabula, it employed nine men. Fast forward only months later, Samu had already 18 working under him, and he says the increase reflected the growing demand for the company’s products.
Mr Hellwig said: “We started off with only two expatriates. Vijay replaced one, and I’m the other.
“My job is to go around developing countries where we are establishing new enterprises and to set them up and sort out technical problems.
“We’ve got things running beautifully here and one of the export jobs we are working on now is a big order for shelving and a compactus.”
Samu and Vijay made a fine team. They got down to practical matters together on the workshop floor just as they were seen doing in photographs.
Samu Mucunabitu, left, is framed in the compactus as he and Vijay Nahabir discuss one of the finer points of assembly in Lysaght Brownbuilt’s factory in
Samabula, Suva.