Diversified NGIP posts K7.3m profit

Business, Main Stories

DIVERSIFICATION across a range of business activities has enabled newly-listed agribusiness company Niugini Island Products (NGIP) to make a profit of K7.3 million before tax, despite a significant fall in cocoa production and processing last year.
During the year, the company listed on the Port Moresby Stock Exchange, opened two new hardware stores and took delivery of two new ships.
It paid an interim dividend of 3 toea per share in January.
The pre-tax profit of K7,297,823, up 8.7% over the previous year, which chairman Don Manoa said was an excellent result considering the very low cocoa production coming out of East New Britain during the year, down by 80%.
He said cocoa production had been affected by cocoa pod borer and adverse seasonal conditions. 
The company purchased a total of 23,300 tonnes of cocoa beans last year, compared to 35,000 tonnes in 2008.
‘NGIP is a diversified company, operating plantations, coastal shipping, hardware, machinery, trucking, agricultural supply, steel fabrication and engineering.
“Together with cocoa exports and favourable prices, these activities had produced a good result, indicating the company was not dependent on the seasonal movements of one commodity,” Mr Manoa said.
“I am very confident the farmers in East New Britain, and elsewhere in PNG, are responding well to managing pod borer. 
“This has been mainly due the extensive advisory work and training being carried out by the company’s professional agricultural advisers now strategically stationed across the country,” he said. 
NGIP has developed effective management methods to deal with pod borer and is actively promoting these methods to affected farmers. 
The company has produced a range of awareness materials promoting the best way to deal with pod borer under the slogan of “every pod, every tree, every week.”
NGIP is Papua New Guinea’s leading cocoa exporting company, the country’s largest cocoa grower and trader, headquartered at Kokopo, East New Britain province.
NGIP has almost 5,000 shareholders from all regions, and has grown from a limited-sized growers’ initiative in 1955, to a diversified group with shareholders’ equity of K100 million.