Fiji’s Flour Mills seeks to expand PNG market

 By GYNNIE KERO

FIJIAN company Flour Mills Ltd is looking at increasing the size of its products in the PNG market after the two governments have agreed to strengthen trade relations. 

Group chief executive officer Ram Bajekal told The National from Fiji yesterday that FMF products including biscuits, noodles and potato chips had been in the PNG market for more than six years.

“At the moment, we have an ongoing agreement with Pacific Industries Ltd as our product distributor and are in the process of identifying more for different zones of PNG.

“FMF products are doing well, they are growing in the PNG market,” Bajekal said.

“The PNG market is certainly very exciting with huge potential. 

“We currently perceive it to be a bit over-heated at the moment with products selling at prices far higher than what could be termed reasonable. 

“In the case of some staple commodities such as rice, we see prices nearly four times the prices in Fiji and it is difficult to fathom what makes them that high.

“At such high prices, it looks as though the real consuming population would not be more than 20% to 25% of the total population,” he said. 

“I feel the real potential of PNG as a market will truly come alive only when participants start getting used to normal costs and normal profits. 

“At the moment everything seems to be hyper-inflated: costs, profit expectations and as a consequence, prices.”