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KVPL records
Rs 132 million profits in first half
Kelani
Valley Pla- ntations PLC (KVPL), the Hayleys Group’s plantation company,
has reported a turnover of Rs 1.2 billion for the six months ending June
30, 2007, achieving a marginal improvement over the corresponding half
of 2006 despite a significant loss of tea crop particularly in the first
quarter of the year.
A nominal increase in rubber production and a 14 per cent improvement in
average net sales prices resulted in revenue from rubber growing 18 per
cent to Rs 481 million. This supported by a 32 per cent increase in the
average sales price for tea, enabled the company to post what its
Managing Director Kavi Seneviratne describes as a satisfactory
performance in the circumstances.
The first quarter of KVPL witnessed a loss of about a third of the
company’s tea production as a result of a 30-day go slow and strike by
plantation workers in late 2006. Seneviratne disclosed that, the adverse
impact of this crop loss was compounded by a wage increase and a sharp
rise in fertilizer cost in the period under review.
As a result of these factors, KVPL’s profit before tax of Rs 143 million
was down by 26 per cent over the first half of 2006, while post-tax
profit declined by 29 per cent to Rs 132 million.
Notwithstanding these setbacks, the company remains confident that the
prevailing prices of tea and rubber will help to partly offset the
factors that impacted on first half performance by the year’s end,
Seneviratne said.
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