Blazing a trail in exports while bracing for competition

Lynn Ockersz

'Business beyond borders' is the new tag line recently adopted by ExpoLanka Holdings Ltd, a pioneer exporter of fruits and vegetables in Sri Lanka, but now a much diversified group of companies which has registered steady growth despite the conflict and other obstacles to business advancement.

Perhaps, the secret of the group's success lies in its ability to forge right ahead on a positive note and in its ability to meet business competition through strategies such as value addition. This interview with Group Director Hanif Yusoof helps to clarify this and a host of other issues.

Q: What has compelled ExpoLanka - a longstanding group - to adopt a new logo and tag line?

A: The reason is because I thought the logo we were carrying all these years was more for local business. It had the word ExpoLanka in the logo itself. Today we want to go international and we already are international. So we thought a logo which is universally recognised and accepted would be the right thing to go in for.

The tag line is "Business beyond borders." This is because we are faced with a global village now, with globalisation setting in. We are a Sri Lankan - owned company but we believe there are no borders to restrict us.

That is why we have gone to the Indian subcontinent, to the African continent and Vietnam. The tag line is like a brand promised to our clients to say "Business beyond borders." We are not restricted to one area. Our business is beyond our national borders.

Q: So your export activities are global in scope?

A: Yes, export activities are going from Sri Lanka to other countries. There's always cross-trading between countries and we want to be part of that.

Q: Could you give us more details of your restructuring plans and how you intend becoming more efficient?

A: We had several companies in the whole group for the last 28 years. Every time we wanted to get into a business there was a new entity - which could be called a mini kingdom. So, in today's context it would be better to consolidate these issues, add common thinking and common values. So that everybody in the group thinks alike and this makes it easy for us to go to the next league.

Now to restructure, we thought we would group our companies into sectors. There are five such sectors. There's the transportation sector; some firms would come under that.

Then there's aviation, international trading, manufacturing and strategic investments. We would have a sector head for each of these sectors and the CEOs in the respective business units would report to the sector head. This would give us specialization.

Q: In connection with aviation, do you run any airlines?

A: Yes, we have ExpoAir which flies to Jaffna twice a day. We have been in aviation for some time. We operate six aircraft, most of them are cargo. But passenger aircraft are operated only to Jaffna.

Q: What are your principal exports and how do you contribute to the export drive?

A: That's a very interesting question. We are the pioneers in the fruits and vegetables business. It was way back in 1978 that we launched this business.

We started as a small company and we were one of the first businesses to win the Presidential Export Award conferred by the EDB at the time, when Lalith Athulathmudali was the Minister.

So, fruits and vegetables are our main exports. But we do other things as well. We are a fairly large tea exporter. We also do some spices, desiccated coconuts, fresh coconuts. These play a significant role in the company's business.

Q: Do you find these export markets expanding?

A: No it's a tough game. There are other markets coming up. In tea, for example, Kenya is catching-up fast with us. In fresh fruits and vegetables India is catching up.

In desiccated coconut Indonesia is catching-up on us. But we have been known for our products; we try to keep ahead of competition. We add value to our commodities.

The only way we could go forward is by adding value. We are constantly looking at all the measures which could result in value addition.

Q: What form does value addition take in fruits and vegetables?

A: In fruits we can add value through proper packaging. We also try to find for them more shelf time, may be in canned form or through dehydration. In tea, we do flavoured teas.

Our tea bags have been around for some time. We are also launching our own brand called Tea Sips.

Q: Do you consider these threats to your exports as serious?

A: No, we do not take any of these threats as being serious. Along with threats I look at opportunities. We have a fairly established market in desiccated coconut. Our fresh coconut is still moving. We aim at penetrating borders. We will go ahead with Sri Lankan exports. If we think we could do cross trading between another country and our buyers, we would continue to do that.

Q: Do Lankan exports occupy any special niches?

A: We have to create such niches. We have been doing that. Our business has been going up year after year. It has not been coming down. That means we are keeping ourselves in the lead in some form or other.

Q: Any recommendations to the Government on improving the business environment?

A: This country has been surprisingly enjoying a steady growth in spite of the war. Everybody's prayers are that there would be an end to our conflict and that our entire environment would change. This is something which is not in our hands.

The Government is trying to tackle that problem. We as business people have to keep our businesses going, despite what is going on around. It is up to us business people to go right ahead with a positive attitude.

Q: Are you satisfied with the pace of infrastructure development?

A: I believe this could be faster but due to the conflict and other problems infrastructure development has taken back stage a little bit. We hope and pray this conflict would be resolved.

We have had this conflict for over two decades but we have gone ahead with our businesses. We hope infrastructure development would occur at a faster pace when the conflict is resolved, and then our businesses would grow even further.

Q: Is the State institutional environment an encouragement or a hindrance to business growth?

A: There is no hindrance, there are only processes which could be streamlined even further. We have seen such processes being streamlined since the liberalisation of the economy.

These processes could only be better streamlined as we go forward; for example, media facilities, trade net facilities, paperless societies, faster processing of documents.

These have been happening but we would like to see them occur at a faster pace.