Precision launches Caribbean furniture marketing drive
Company to spend $70m on regional product promotion push
Stabroek News
December 1, 2006
Wooden furniture manufactured by Precision Woodworking on the premises of prestigious Gleneagles Hotel in Pertshire, Scotland
Having met with outstanding success on the United Kingdom market Precision Woodworking Ltd. is moving to secure similar success for its garden and leisure furniture in the Caribbean.
Two months ago the company launched a $70m region-wide marketing push that includes a high-quality promotional brochure and a website designed to ensure that regional importers become familiar with its products.
Managing Director of Precision Ronald Bulkan told Stabroek Business that the company was working with internationally renowned British furniture designer Roger Vickary to create a branded Precision product.
In a recent interview with Stabroek Business Bulkan said that Precision's modest accomplishments in the furniture export sector could serve as an incentive for the major players in the forestry sector to add meaningful value to harvested timber before it reaches the export market. "When we fail to add value to our timber we deny Guyana's economy the lion's share of the real economic value of its forest resources," Bulkan told Stabroek Business.
In 2001 Precision Woodworking was awarded the coveted Ernst & Young Caribbean Entrepreneur of the Year award and Bulkan told Stabroek Business that investment in equipment and training necessary to create a capacity to manufacture high quality wood products for the export market can radically enhance the contribution of the forestry sector to the country's economy. Bulkan also wants policy statements on adding value to the country's forestry resources to be converted into concrete initiatives to achieve that objective.
Bulkan told Stabroek Business that logs exported from Guyana were currently being marketed at between US$90.00 and US$140.00 per cubic meter and that every 1,000 cubic meters of logs provided employment for seven persons. Rough sawn timber is marketed overseas at around US$600.00 per cubic meter with every 1,000 cubic meters of rough sawn timber providing employment for 28 persons. By comparison, Bulkan said, finished timber products realize returns at the rate of around US$2,000..00 per cubic meter with every 1,000 cubic metres of finished product providing employment for hundreds of persons.
According to Bulkan Guyana has continually articulated a policy of adding value to timber exports as reflected in a 1997 Forests Policy statement, the 2001 National Forest Plan and the National Development Strategy.
He said that those policy pronouncements had to be transformed into meaningful action. Bulkan disclosed that the issue of adding value to the country's timber exports was one of the areas of discussion during a recent meeting between representatives of the Guyana Manufacturers Association (GMA) and Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud. He said that while the Minister had endorsed the desirability of pursuing a policy of adding value to local timber.
Established in 1983, Precision Woodworking boasts the distinction of having lifted the country's wooden furniture manufacturing industry from the status of a small-business, predominantly craft-oriented activity to a large-scale industrial pursuit designed to meet the demands of the export market. Bulkan told Stabroek Business that in the absence of local skills necessary to meet the quality requirements of the export market, Precision had relied on expatriate skills to meet those standards and to provide skills training for the local labour force for ten years. He disclosed that it took fifteen years for the company to realize returns on its investment.
Precision exports 99 per cent of its furniture and 90 per cent of its exports are marketed in the United Kingdom. Much of the company's high quality garden and leisure furniture is sold directly to prestigious stores in the United Kingdom or else, through overseas distributors.
According to Bulkan the challenge of producing furniture for the export market is rendered all the more difficult in view of the high cost of inputs - raw materials, electricity, capital, labour and operating supplies. "Because we are a high cost destination high levels of training and high productivity are essential to our operating efficiency," Bulkan told Stabroek Business.