Major Noel Dawes, managing director of Lumber Depot Limited.
Construction material retailer Lumber Depot Limited has doubled its second-quarter earnings, comporting with the positive results of other companies that do business in the sector.
The company, which operates a hardware store, said it sought to keep inventory readily available during the period amid increased demand for supplies.
“During the period under review, a major area of focus for us was to maintain consistent inventory levels in all of the key hardware supplies – including lumber, steel and cement products – regardless of the factors affecting production and transportation of these items. We have been generally successful with this and in turn, this has improved our standing with key customers,” said Managing Director Major Noel Dawes in the preface to the financials.
Jamaican soap manufacturers have lost a year-long battle for continued duty-free exports to the Caricom market of 18 million people.
The loss comes after a successful challenge in late November at Caricom’s Council for Trade and Economic Development, COTED, by the government of Dominica on behalf of a soap and soap input producers in the tiny Caribbean nation of 72,000 people.
Dominica Coconut Products Successors Limited, DCPS, had long held that the Jamaican firms were breaching the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, the agreement that governs trade and functional cooperation arrangements among the 15 member countries of Caricom.
DCPS, the sole Caricom producer of animal fat and palm oil-based noodles that are the core ingredient for the production of soap bars, wants to lock Jamaican companies into buying its raw material over their current suppliers in Indonesia, in order for the local firms to continue qualifying for “community origin status” and the waiver of the 40 per ce
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Lumber Depot Limited has benefited from improved revenues and its tax status arising from listing on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE).
Shareholders equity for Lumber Depot Limited has increased by 34 per cent for the year‐to‐date and now stands at $258.28 million.
Lumber Depot, in its current form, began operation when its assets and liabilities were acquired from the Blue Power Group Limited with effect from August 1, 2019.
Lumber Depot Limited then listed on the Junior Market on December 16, 2019.
The company which serves the middle market in construction services has been holding its own, despite the downtown in the Jamaican economy.