Against the backdrop of a decidedly modest after-tax profit of $30.0 million, local company Caribbean Container Inc (CCI) has announced that its shareholders are to receive $0.20.00 per share for 2014, a 53.8 per cent increase on the $0.13.00 earnings per share at the end of 2013.
In the company’s recently released 2014 Annual Report, Acting Chairperson and Managing Director Pat Bacchus described as “a celebrated event” the eventual repayment of long-term loans made to the company in 2006 and 2007 which enabled the payment of what the Report described as “compromise settlement sums” to financial institutions to which CCI had been heavily indebted for several years. The Report says the settlement of these debts at the end of last year now means that CCI has started 2015 with no long-term liability or bank overdraft “and with no debentures or liens on its assets for the first time since the company’s formation.”
CCI says this circumstance now provides the opportunity for cash flows to be directed in a more substantial manner to “critical equipment re-tooling, (and) further securing efficient operational performance through the use of reliable plant and machinery.”
Pat Bacchus
In its 2014 Report, CCI says demand for its corrugated packaging suffered a reduction on account of what it says was a slowdown in some commercial sectors.
Established in 1983 Caribbean Container Inc (CCI) operates the only Paper Recycling Mill in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) manufacturing products using wastepaper as feedstock.
The company’s box-plant, uses as the primary raw material paper produced by the Mill, to manufacture corrugated packaging and fibreboard fitments. CCI’s packaging has found markets across the region with the single largest portion of production exported to Caricom customers.
There exists an acknowledged environmental significance arising out of its domestic collection of wastepaper which removes in excess of 1,200 cubic metres of landfill space monthly.
The paper mill became operational in 2003 and the company was privatized in 1992. In January, 2007 the majority shareholder “Demerara Holdings Inc” was acquired by Technology Investments and Management Inc., and the company restructured.
In the company’s 2015 annual report, its Acting Chairperson sought to put a brave face on a preceding year in which the entity not only lost its Chairman and Managing Director Ronald Webster following a prolonged illness but also reported that revenue shortfall in some industries, including gold, “may have affected the growth potential in some sectors and consequently the corresponding sales potential for corrugated packages to those sectors.”
