Paradise Foods Limited Chief Executive Officer Michael Penrose has outlined exciting plans for 2023.
PNG Economy:
Paradise Foods Ltd. suffered the same global effects as other local manufacturers from the Russian invasion in Ukraine, resulting in higher imported commodity prices and continuing logistics issues from Covid-19. We worked extremely diligently looking for alternative suppliers and sources to minimise any adverse price effects. These headwinds including inflationary pressures are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Even during this adversity, the Paradise entities performed well reflecting the entire company working together to achieve a great result. Local coastal shipping has been trying at times with a shortage of both capacity and frequency of sailings.
We seek to grow our footprint and market share to ensure everyone can find our full range of brands across the country.. We plan to commission a new biscuit oven at our Lae factory later this year and are about to embark on building a National Distribution Center on the same site in Lae. We have some other exciting developments scheduled for 2023 that will be unveiled closer to the time.
Downstream Processing:
Chocolate factory upgrade
Plans to upgrade the Port Moresby chocolate plant are underway with the initial proposal accepted by the European Union and Food Agriculture Organisation.
The upgrade will see the plant go from processing 15MT to 100MT of cocoa beans monthly. We are looking forward to signing the implementation agreement with the FAO to proceed with sourcing of equipment in the coming months.
Partnerships
Work is progressing with the 3 activities agreed under the partnership with Pacific Horticulture Agriculture Market Access (PHAMA). Firstly for Organic certification the team visited selected farmer site in Abau and are progressing well preparation of documents. Secondly the engagement of an international marketing consultant, we have engaged Ms Oonagh Browne from NZs The Cacao Ambassador to work with QE to find market opportunities in NZ. She will be arriving in PNG this month to meet and connect with QE farmers in Sepik, provide training on requirements for QEC , capture imagery for international brand development and work with QEC team on. An initial visit was done to farmer group in Abau in November 22. In the third activity a workplace policy on Gender Violence is being developed in collaboration with the Business Coalition for Women.
Through Australia’s and New Zealand’s support, PHAMA Plus will assist Queen Emma Chocolate’s network of growers to attain organic certification for the New Zealand and Australia markets, directly responding to feedback and market demand for certified organic cocoa.
There is an added benefit as we supply chocolate to our own manufacturing of Rok Rok biscuits and Gala chocolate chip ice cream, avoiding importing with the respective logistical challenges and forex availability issues.
Chocolate is a high-value business with commercial opportunities for value-added premium products. PNG is already a producer of cocoa beans, but these beans are exported at low commodity prices. Paradise Foods is the only company to further process the beans in the country and there is an opportunity to leverage this by providing higher value inputs (liquor, butters & powders) to international chocolate producers abroad.
Conclusion:
Laga Industries amalgamated into Paradise Foods Ltd. effective 1st Jan 2023, enabling us to combine the respective companies as we grow our business across PNG. This gives synergies throughout the company particularly in logistics and sales with one combined team focusing across the entire business.
There won’t be any changes to brands that PNG Consumers are used to.
