Last year I outlined our strategy to make the Richard Pieris &: Company Group a transnational corporation with a reputation built around quality and manufacturing excellence. To this end, some of the initiatives we planned for the year were implemented and we can take some satisfaction in achieving a number of our goals and objectives. We do, however, have a way to go before we achieve our performance benchmarks as well as our strategic aims in relation to becoming a truly global company.

For the coming year, we have set ambitious targets for each of our business units, whilst offering them support in the form of strong Information Technology, Human Resource and Procurement divisions which have been centralized and considerably improved operationally. Our operational companies also have the benefit of a strong finance division, with an active treasury that ensures our considerable exposure to foreign exchange rate fluctuations as well as to interest rate changes are prudently managed.

In order to achieve our goals, we pursued certain acquisitions during the course of the year that made strategic sense to the Group. We will continue to look at such opportunities in the coming year.