Record lease bonus payment to pine landowners

Fiji Pine Group of Companies has paid out a record $1 million in lease security bonus payments to the pine landowners.

While presenting the cheques to the landowners, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said Fiji Pine Group of Companies recorded an unprecedented consolidated operating profit of $21.27 million in 2014.

He said four years ago, the group had a consolidated loss of $5 million.

Bainimarama said this is a remarkable turnaround of $26 million as the industry was on the verge of collapse - heavily in debt, unable to service its loans, unable to pay its creditors on time, unable to replant after harvesting, its infrastructure was failing and the company faced a storm of criticism from disgruntled landowners.

The Prime Minister said as the company makes the turnaround, the returns are now flowing to the landowners.

This is the third lease security bonus payment to the landowners since February last year.

The other two bonus payments to the landowners totaled $780,000.

This comes on top of previous payments for stumpage and levies amounting to $2.8 million.

This is also on top of the annual lease payments.

Bainimarama again asked the Itaukei landowners not to listen to misleading information.

Major achievements have been made by Fiji Pine Group of Companies.

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said Fiji Pine has set a new benchmark for the performance of state-owned enterprises.

He said the company paid off its $10 million loan to the Fiji Development Bank that financed its reform programme in just 20 months, writing the last cheque of $8.6 million from the company’s operational cash flow in June last year.

Bainimarama said Fiji Pine also paid off the $6.7 million loan to Fijian Holdings in just 17 months, writing the last cheque of $5.1 million from its operational cash flow in February 2014.

He said Fiji Pine also paid off a European Investment Loan that had been taken out way back in 1985, in one lump sum of $2.3 million in May 2013.

The Prime Minister said Fiji Pine’s current $16 million sawmill upgrade to purchase new equipment from Sweden to replace plant that is four decades old is also being done without having to borrow a single cent.

With these plant upgrades, the company will be producing the same volume of sawn timber from far fewer logs.

Bainimarama also thanked Fiji Pine Executive Chairman Faiz Khan for his leadership.