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Habé Roode - Hygrotech International Inc. |
June 2003 |
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What are the
main challenges you see for the next few years? |
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One of the
main challenges over the next few years would be to make the
business work in Africa. The vast differences in style,
culture and European influences make Africa one of the most
difficult continents to work in. However the sub-continent has
great potential, NEPAD has been launched and if the giant
wakes up there will be great potential and opportunities to
expand product development, business in general and hopefully
profit. Profits have to be made, also in Africa, for companies
to reinvest and expand support systems, technical and
operational, further to really be of service to the vast
and diverse customer base in the region.
On the ground another challenge would
not only be to defend and sustain our market share in South
Africa but also to expand our market share and sales in the
SADC countries through our subsidiaries. Eight years ago, when
we were mostly an importing company (which resulted in enormous
risk of exchange rate fluctuations), it was extremely difficult
to plan ahead and manage the continuous loss of value of the
South African Rand against the world’s hard currencies.
Exports to our Southern African subsidiaries including small
seed exports to customers all over the world, certainly
established a certain amount of hedging against exchange rate
risk. One of the strategies in a 5 year plan is to endeavor to
increase exports to the extent of a 50/50 ratio to imports,
which ideally will give us a complete hedge against exchange
rate fluctuations.
A challenge will always be to
continuously upgrade or replace existing products with newer
and better products with specific focus on innovation or niche
markets in order to satisfy the opportunities in the big market place
out there. The solid part of product development is to replace
existing champion products with a safety net of new, improved
products to protect the market share of each individual
product. Then there is always specific product development,
after the necessary product analysis and market survey of the
competitors products are
done, to find something as good as,
or better than, the competition,s best products. |
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