Displaying items by tag: Fiji Industries Limited

Fiji: Fiji Industries Limited, a subsidiary of Fijian Holdings Limited Group, is being renamed as Pacific Cement Limited following approval from the board.

Acting general manager, Sonni Dutt, said that the company has been in existence for the past 60 years, however, a lot of people do not associate the company with cement manufacturing.

"Fiji Industries has been there for so long. However, if you ask the grassroots people what Fiji Industries does, they won't know that we produce cement," he said. "We had to decide this because our brand is called Pacific Cement. Therefore we feel the new name will better reflect what we do." Fiji Industries Limited already has Pacific Cement brand on its cement bags.

The move comes as the company plans expansion into the Pacific exports markets. Dutt said, "We are now eyeing the Pacific market. We were the only cement factory in the Pacific and so we decided to go with that name."

The official launch date for the new name has not been yet confirmed, however, the company is in a transition phase to the new name. It is rebranding and planning the rebrand launch.

Dutt confirmed that there will be a major launch to mark the name change in the city of Suva, Fiji followed by another one in the west and another one in the north of the country.

Fiji: The Fiji Commerce Commission has approved a 2.7% increase in the wholesale price of bagged and bulk cement effective from 1 November 2013. Commission chairman Dr Mahendra Reddy said the prices were determined following factors raised in a detailed analysis of the submission from Fiji's sole cement producer, Fiji Industries Limited (FIL) and an independent investigation and analysis.

"Those factors included an increase in the price of raw materials (clinker and slag) from previous years because of the strong US currency, an increase in production labour rate by 4% based on union log of claim and an increase in capital expenditure to maintain the mill efficiency in the financial year 2013," said Reddy.