KEY POINTS:
Maori seafood company Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd (AFL) has posted an annual profit of $16.5 million, almost $2m higher than predicted, chairman Rob McLeod said today.
The result was also $3 million ahead of the previous year.
The year to September had surpassed expectations "despite the current climate being neither politically or economically benign to the seafood industry".
In the company's first full year report, he said the financial performance of AFL would continue to be affected by external factors over which the company had little control.
Those included the high dollar, interest rates among the highest in the developed economies, a bundle of ever-increasing government compliance costs and high-energy costs, he said.
Among the main reasons for the improved operating results were benefits from the rationalisation of processing facilities within the Inshore Division.
There was also an increased focus on high return species, new business growth within the Abalone Division, strong volumes and margins in the Aquaculture Division with the pacific oyster business, and a solid trading performance from 50 per cent-owned investment Sealord.
Sealord reported sales of more than $600 million for the first time and returned a net profit after tax of $24.8 million.
AFL was formed in November 2004 to manage certain Maori fisheries settlement assets and is not required to distribute dividends for its first five years.
When dividends start they will be distributed to the company's iwi owners on the basis of their relative shareholding in the company, worked out according to relative population.
AFL chief executive Robin Hapi said this year's profit would be reinvested into the business.
In his comments, Mr McLeod also referred to the debate about bottom trawling.
AFL and Sealord were two of the architects of a New Zealand fishing industry proposal to close almost a third of New Zealand's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to protect the bio-diversity of the sea floor environment, he said.
Proposed protection areas were geographically representative of all deepwater marine environment classifications.
"This is the largest total closure to bottom trawl fishing within an EEZ ever undertaken in the World. Coupled with the fact that less than 10 per cent of New Zealand's EEZ is bottom trawled, it represents massive protection for the marine environment," Mr McLeod said.
The industry viewed the proposal as a comprehensive and far-reaching solution, unequalled anywhere else in the world.
"The Government has yet to commit to that view, and is ever-sensitive to the current anti-bottom trawl dynamic driven by NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
"These NGOs are, in the main, not satisfied -- or perhaps even aware -- that 90 per cent of the EEZ is untouched by bottom trawl fishing, but who want trawled areas returned to their natural state," he said.
"This is the equivalent of suggesting that New Zealand should stop farming in Waikato and let the land revert to bush."
- NZPA
