How has it been settling in at Paradise Company?
The first 4 weeks have been a steep learning curve for me, having been on the Board of Directors of PCL has made the transition smooth but I didn’t realize until I commenced my induction how much more there was to learn about the business. Everybody in the business have been of great help in terms of feeding me with information and answering my queries.
It was also great to meet some of our large customers, it’s quite obvious they are very supportive of our business and genuinely want to partner with us.
What are some of your views about the company so far?
What struck me the most was how vibrant and dynamic the organization is. The level of talent we have in the business is phenomenal and the diversity we have both in terms of gender balance and people from all over PNG working for us is a strength we need to leverage.
We have strong brands that are well known by consumers and the focus on innovation that I have seen in the business tells me that we are continually looking at optimizing opportunities in the market place as well as improving efficiency within the business
There are also some big opportunities as well, for us to grow we need to increase our production capacity, improve our secondary supply chain and increase our breadth and depth of distribution of our brands.
What can we expect from you going forward; what are your plans and visions for the company for 2022?
I have broken up the 2022 focus areas into two parts;
The drivers of growth in 2022 are;
- Construction of the new cracker line and National distribution center in Lae
- Implementing our new Route to Market model
- Exploiting export opportunities for Cocoa bi-products
- New category lines
What is going to fuel this growth are:
- Implementing our new ERP system
- Gross Margin Enhancement – COGS reduction | Discount reduction | Pricing Strategy
- Talent Strategy
- Supply Chain improvements and enhancements
- Enhance the way we work between PFL and Laga functions
- Implement a robust Governance framework
These will be underpinned by values that define how operate as an organization.
Longer term we have a 5 year growth strategy to deliver a primary objective of doubling our 2020 revenues by 2026 and a lot of the work we commence in 2021 will kickstart this 5 year strategy.
