Habé Roode - Hygrotech International Inc.

June 2003

What are the main challenges you see for the next few years?
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.

 

 

Copyright © 2003 SeedQuest - All rights reserved