Caribbean Container Inc (CCI) is celebrating the milestone of a modest profit at the end of 2012, a feat which it has been unable to achieve in more than 15 years.
The company’s 2012 Annual Report, a copy of which was sent to the Stabroek Business indicates the declaration of $26 million in profits after taxes, a financial performance which positions the company to pay its shareholders a dividend of $8 per share.
The disclosure in the company’s 2012 annual report reflects an unspectacular but definite turnaround in its performance. In January 2007 when the company commenced its restructuring its shares were being traded at $20 per share. By the end of 2012 those shares had jumped to $500 per share.
Meanwhile, Company Chairman Ron Webster says that CCI is close to closing a deal with an international liquid food packaging supplier under which the local company will recycle the firm’s recyclable cartons.
Webster says in the company’s annual report that the unnamed firm is seeking a partnership with CCI under which its collectable cartons are distributed across the Caribbean region. Webster says “negotiations are approaching finality” and that the recycling project is expected to begin in August.
The project, he says, “will provide CCI with a source of very high grade fibre to further enhance the quality of its paper.”
CCI’s efforts to enhance the quality of the paper that it produces comes against the backdrop of what Webster says is the company’s dependence on the production of corrugated packaging and related green products that meet international standards for product quality, presentation and price for success in the international market.
CCI’s production over the past year has been largely dependent on paper produced at its own mill. The report says waste paper continues to be sourced locally and in the region, from Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname and Barbados. It adds that while the company had devised a collection plan for last year to reduce its dependence on more expensive imported waste paper under which it “was to put in place management expertise and equipment” to increase local waste paper collection the programme suffered a late start and has only now begun to gain momentum.
CCI introduced its Ecopak range of biodegradable food packages during the final quarter of last year “as an environmentally safe alternative to the polystyrene range that has become and environmental and health hazard across Guyana,” the report says.
Meanwhile, Webster says that CCI recorded “another strong year” in 2012 increasing its turnover by 5 per cent over the previous year, with a 10 per cent rise in export sales volumes though he says that “margins of exports remain under pressure due to fairly high freight costs resulting in part from the siltation in the Georgetown port.”
