New Blue Power MD to focus on market penetration
Published:Sunday | March 11, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Sabrina Gordon, Business Reporter
Blue Power Group Limited has split the functions of managing director and chairman held by founder Dhiru Tanna, and has tapped internal talent to take over the soap company's daily operations.
Tanna remains chairman in a non-executive capacity.
Major Noel Dawes, an employer with Blue Power and general manager since 1999, has now been appointed managing director.
"It's something that we have been planning for some time now - the idea of a successor - and we decided that now is the right time to do it," Tanna told Sunday Business.
"It will give him a chance to put his own stamp on things with the new financial year coming up May 1," he said.
Dawes, who took up his new post on March 6, said Blue Power would continue working smoothly together as a team with greater focus on the soap side of the operation at Victoria Avenue in Kingston. The company is also in the lumber-distribution business, which operates from a depot in Papine, St Andrew.
Blue Power Group has been listed on the junior market since 2010. The stock currently trades at around J$5.60.
"The greatest area for growth potential is the soap market which we want to penetrate more," said Dawes.
"We just introduced a white and coloured Castile soap to the market and we see it picking up. We have more on the way and we hope to go more into the beauty-soap market while still pushing our Blue soap," he said.
Increasing challenges
Performance of the lumber division has lagged in the recession and presents "increasing challenges, but we are still trying to maintain our customer base and build on that," Dawes said.
Still in its third-quarter financial results released last week, the company reported significant increase in sales of hardware items from J$129.75 million to J$182.3 million, while soap sales recorded a slight decline.
The lumber division landed a foreign agency supply contract in the period, which accounts for the increase in its sales while the Blue Power soap division experienced some difficulties with the supply of key ingredients, the company said.
However, Blue Power said corrective measures have been implemented and expects to see sales levels for the fourth quarter resume to a normal progression.
For the quarter ending January 2012, the company posted net profits of J$15.52 million, an increase of 34.72 per cent compared to the J$11.52 million made in the same quarter of 2010-11.
Combined sales for the three-month period amounted to J$235.77 million compared to J$185.31 million in the prior period - an increase of J$50.46 million or 27.23 per cent.