BMC bounces back to profitability
Keikantse Lesemela | Friday October 10, 2014 16:58
This reverses the huge successive losses of P324 million in 2012 and P87.82 million in 2011.
BMC chief accountant, Mbaakanyi Lenyatso, told BusinessWeek that the profits took a quantum leap because the commission recorded higher sales in the year after they were signed back into the European Union market.
“We had more sales than before after we returned to the EU market. We were even able to penetrate other markets within the EU,” he said.
While the total tonnage of beef exported in 2013 was lower than the amount of 2012, a 700 percent rise in exports to the lucrative EU markets significantly contributed to the profit rise.
“The total beef exported in 2013 was 18,454 tonnes compared to 20,573 tonnes in 2012. However, only 750 tonnes were sold to EU markets in 2012 whereas in 2013, we sold 5,991 tonnes to EU,” he said.
Lenyatso explained that after BMC was barred from exporting beef to the EU market, their profits declined from P107.9 million in 2011 to P37.5 million in 2012. The company then initiated new strategies to enable them to access markets outside the EU.
BMC also announced that the Department of Veterinary Services had approved the slaughter plant, cutting plant and cold stores at the Lobatse abattoirs. These were used for the exportation of meat to local, regional and EU markets last year July following their compliance with the European Union’s Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) and Botswana’s Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) requirements.
In its 2014-2016 strategy, BMC intends to process thorough-put of 211,776 cattle at a unit production cost of P4 per head or less at plant level. The commission believes these targets will maximise the Pula value per head of cattle and thus increase returns for cattle producers.
To date BMC has export volumes stands at 14,839 tonnes of beef with 9,882 tonnes to other markets and 4,957 tonnes to the EU market.
Lenyatso said they expect to reach a turnover of about P1.6 billion with profits reaching P46 million in the year ended December 2014.
BMC is likely to continuously increase its annual returns as they have secured new export markets in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran and other Middle East countries.