The Board’s Message

This year we have seen particularly difficult trading conditions. Many prices have dropped and all have been affected by huge currency movements. Price savings have been passed on to customers and therefore turnover is down 3.3% compared to last year.

The strong Australian Dollar has accelerated the move to overseas manufacture, thereby further reducing demand for our products. To counter this we have again increased our product range and deployed additional resources into key industries.

Although profits were considerably down on previous years and much closer to historic norms, we have again retained a large propotion and our Net Tangiable Assets now exceed AUD 144 million.

The major review of our Strategic Plan is well under way and it is hoped that action plans will deliver a return to the fast growth that has made us one of the largest distributors of chemicals and raw materials in Australia and New Zealand. Although we have been actively looking for acquisition targets, none of these were deemed to provide a boost that we are looking for.

We will continue to focus on deeper penitration of our current markets; we will be further adding to our product range and doing a lot more in the speciality chemical area.

Our ability to fund twice as much turnover as we currently doing will inevitably encourage us to find suitable businesses to acquire. We are currently looking for opportunities locally and in South East Asia. This should enable us to top up what has been a long term proven record of strong organic growth.

Finally we have selected and purchased a property in Brisbane in order to build our ‘Queensland home’. The site measures 23,000m² and should enable us to store increased stock levels and thereby provide our customers with improved services. Building work will start soon on the land purchased next door to our Melbourne site. The construction will be especially designed to accomodate food grade products and will fully meet our customers’ requirements.

This year, we have found new and innovative ways of adding value for our suppliers. We are sure we can do even more, and will be reviewing options with our long term friends. In the meantime, we take this opportunity to thank them for the support over many years.

Our customers have clearly had a tough year. We have tried to assist them by increasing our stock holding, improving credit terms and by creative logistic solutions. Needless to say, we stand prepared to assist in any way that we can, because our customers are the focus of our business.

Finally, we need to thank our staff whose devotion and perserverance has made Redox the successful business parter of choice. Our numbers have grown again this year and further specialisation has been achieved making each of us a very valuable part and crucial to the future success of Redox.

Robert Coneliano
Managing Director