Nawae closes shop after 45yrs

A PAPUA New Guinean construction company under liquidation claims it has been affected not only by the Covid-19 but a dominance of foreign contractors in the industry.
The shareholders of Zorba Construction Ltd and Nawae Construction Ltd in line with the Companies Act of 1997 voluntarily placed the two companies in the hands of the liquidator Rex Paki of Ram Business Consultants.
Chairman and founder of Zorba Construction, which owns Nawae Construction, Julius Violaris, said his company had reached a point where liquidation was the best option for shareholders.
“We reached a point where debts are, in best case scenario, on par with the company assets and due to the lack of work the shareholders had no other option but to appoint a liquidator to liquidate the two companies’ assets in order to repay creditors,” he said.
“Since 2016, Nawae has not won a major project that could sustain the company, this was not due to a lack of effort to obtain work.
Violaris said Nawae had a 45-year track record for delivering quality projects on time and in a cooperative manner with all stakeholders which earned it a good reputation within the industry.
He said the company had tendered for many projects and were the lowest bidders in many cases.
“Unfortunately, work that should have been awarded to us was not, but what contributed to our financial ruin was the fact that this was not made known to us for many months, even a year after tenders closed.
“In some instances, authorities assured that the projects would be awarded to us only to be informed much later that it had been awarded to others.
“During that time, we had to maintain our readiness and capacity, this meant keeping staff on the payroll and maintaining or even replacing equipment.
“Many of you know that Nawae, a Papua New Guinean company, has a long-standing reputation for building infrastructure in remote areas.
“Over the past 45 years, many roads, bridges, jetties and other structures have been built by Nawae in every corner of the country, as well as in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
“Apart from roads, bridges, jetties and wharves, Nawae has installed many of the marine navigation aids – lighthouses – along our coasts and was responsible for maintaining them until recently.
“We thank our incredible bankers, Bank of South Pacific, for accepting these official assurances and for extending facilities to support us during these times.”
Violaris said Nawae had maintained an average full time staff of 250, mainly key staff, for the last 25 years.
“This expanded to as high as 1,000 workers during busy times.
“Some of our most reliable staff were second and third generation Nawae workers.
“Nawae trained and promoted its Papua New Guinean staff to be experts in the marine and bridge construction industry and this enabled us to compete with any international company.”
He said Nawae was a good corporate citizen, investing back into the community in the fields of education, health and community support. The company worked with the communities of all its project sites, to provide meaningful input into those communities and to maximise their involvement.
“I am proud to say that Nawae would be welcomed back by any of those communities in which it carried out projects. However, along with our competitive and compliant bids, this was not largely considered by decision makers when bidding for contracts.
“We find ourselves today, in an environment that does not value what we bring and we found ourselves unsupported by the people that control the allocation of projects
“Another major factor is the fact that many of the infrastructure projects that we would normally be involved in are now being funded and built by foreign contractors and their governments, without going through the normal competitive bidding process, so we could not even tender for these projects.”
Based on information he provided as part of a trade and investment delegation to France in 2016, Violaris was born in Cyprus in 1957 and migrated with his family to PNG in 1966 when the territory was then under Australia.
In 1972, his father started Zorba Construction Pty Ltd, a civil engineering construction company.
Four years later, it started Nawae Construction Ltd.
It later expanded into shipping and marine construction as well as general civil engineering. Violaris is a resident of Alotau, Milne Bay, but spends time in Cyprus where his family lives.