Published: 08 September 2013

ONE of the country's oldest wooden flooring and furniture companies, Durawood Products, is set to resume full-throttle production before the end of this year after scaling down its operations in the last three years owing to lack of capital injection.

During its peak, Durawood Products was one of the country's biggest foreign currency earners realising over 100 000 pounds a month through exports mainly to the United Kingdom.

However, over the years the company has fallen on hard times culminating in it drastically reducing its workforce from 530 to 70, a factor attributed to the country's economic downturn and the recession which hit its European market.

Durawood boasts of being one of the first timber processors in Africa to be awarded a Forest Management certificate by Forest Stewardship Council Certification of Mexico in 1996 to enable its products to be sold in Europe after that market became environmentally conscious to the extent of burning uncertified products in shops which were coming from non-sustainable resources.

To obtain the international certificate, Durawood Products engaged Switzerland's SGS, which is rated as one of the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification companies in collaboration with the Forestry Commission.

"Basically we were producing flooring for the local market and eventually we extended it to exports. From 1995, 90 percent of the turnover was for export to Germany, United Kingdom (UK), Finland and South Africa. Those were the main export markets. We then also started furniture production in 1999 and exported to Denmark under a Danish International Development Agency (Danida) programme.

"We stopped operating three years ago because of the economic turmoil spawned by the recession that was in the UK where the housing market fell. Flooring basically means housing. The economic turmoil spread throughout Europe where our big markets were so it affected us adversely and we reduced production. We are waiting for funds, as we speak there are people that have promised to put in some money and our concessions are being renewed so we are looking forward to resuming operations," said the company's chief operations manager, Mr Ben Bwawa.

He said the company needed close to $1 million for recapitalisation adding that it was poised to improve its revenue generation buoyed by the gradual rebounding of the property market.

"To run through we need about $600 000 but we also want to change product that will entail new equipment but we won't need more than a $1 million and our shareholders and directors are working on that.

"We are looking at a product called composite flooring where you put just a thin layer of the local timber and you laminate it with pine or waste and that becomes the base but the surface remains the same. That's the popular product that is in Europe right now," Mr Bwawa said.
- sundaynews