BERJAYA GROUP BERHAD - Berjaya Corporation Berhad

56
CEO’s Review Of Operations
Fatimah Hospital in Ipoh, Perak. During recent
months, the company has opened another 10
collecting centres and expanded its courier
networks to cover 10 major towns throughout
the country.
INDUSTRY
Dunham-Bush (Malaysia) Bhd achieved a
turnover of RM459 million, an increase of
10.3% over the previous year. However, a loss
of RM6.4 million before taxation was recorded
compared to a profit before tax of RM20.6
million achieved last year. The loss was mainly
attributable to the economic crisis in Asia,
which adversely affected our Malaysian
operations and the poor performance of certain
subsidiaries in the UK and USA.
Our Malaysian operations recorded a lower
turnover of RM152.9 million and profit before
tax of RM12.5 million compared to RM175
million and RM24.5 million respectively in the
previous year mainly due to higher import costs
and the depreciation of our currency.
DUNHAM-
BUSH’S NEW
COMPLEX
FACTORY IN
KIDAMAI
INDUSTRIAL
ESTATE,
KAJANG.
The economic downturn in the region had also
resulted in lower demand for our products in
Malaysia and Asia. This caused us to work
closely with our overseas sales office to increase
our export sales to South America, Middle-East
and Continental Europe. We have in response
to the government’s call also continued to
increase the local content of our products by
either localizing the fabrication of several
proprietary components and parts or by local
sourcing of equivalent raw materials and parts
which are produced in Malaysia.
Our new manufacturing facility in Kidamai
Industrial Estate, Kajang, Selangor which
houses the latest manufacturing and testing
facilities in particular for the production of large
capacity chillers has commenced operations.
The new factory cum-office complex also
houses four chiller testing stations capable of
performance testing both air-cooled and watercooled
package chillers from 5 tons to 1500 tons
capacity, with different electrical supply and
voltages. The investment in these new facility
and associated machineries has made our
Malaysian operation one of the largest
producers and exporters of large capacity
electric chillers in the Asia-Pacific Region.
Our USA operations did not contribute much to
the Group’s profit due to an extremely
competitive domestic market, high engineering
and product development costs and its inability
to off-set the loss of a substantial portion of its
traditional export sales to the Asia-Pacific
countries supplied from our Malaysian and
China factories. However, the Group will
continue to increase its market share in the
USA and South American markets and invest in
product and research development programmes
as its worldwide business is highly dependent
on the continuing technology transfer from the
USA operations. During the year, Dunham-Bush
Inc. continued to improve its performance,
reliability and features of its product lines and
introduced several new series of products such
as the ECDX Evaporative Cooled Condenser
Chillers and new unit ventilator.
We also invested USD2.5 million mainly in
upgrading the manufacturing facility for the
production of Rotary Screw compressors. The
Harrisonburg VA operation also invested and
commissioned a New Powder Coating paint
system from Eisenmann Corporation of
Germany at a cost of USD1.1 million.