E-force closes portal dream

By ADAM GIFFORD

Dreams of turning a South Island timber company into an internet portal operator have died.

E-Force is closing its portal and concentrating on the business of importer Product Sourcing International (PSI). Chairman Richmond Paynter, who turned his family's listed but struggling sawmilling company Paynter Timber Group into E-Force a year ago, has resigned "to pursue other interests."

The idea behind E-Force was that it would aggregate members or shareholders to access online services. E-Force chief executive Bill Farmer said the decision to close the portal was in line with the directors' report issued with the company's half-year result, which included the full write-down of its activities.

"The company has been reacting to both the realities of the change in market sentiment towards dot.com companies and the fact that insufficient revenues are being generated from the portal activities to keep it on the air," Mr Farmer said.

When E-Force bought PSI in June, Mr Paynter said it was part of a plan to build a fully integrated, end-to-end global e-commerce organisation that was active in the business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer sectors.

The transaction meant the shareholders of PSI, then a private company, ended up with a majority of E-Force shares.

Mr Farmer, PSI's chief executive, took up the same role in E-Force with the departure soon after the merger of founder Mark Fulton.

PSI was formed in 1990 to take advantage of the end of import licensing. It now provides large retailers with supply-chain management services such as product identification, quality control, freight, delivery, import and export documentation and currency management.

It has offices in Hong Kong, China and Australia, with affiliates in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Mr Farmer said business had been hard this year "with the adverse impacts of the low New Zealand dollar and generally poor economic conditions."

He said that in the period to August 31, E-Force made a loss of $2,920,772, which "reflects the complete write-down of the portal, [paying for] all acquisition costs related to the PSI purchase, and foreign-exchange losses."'