TUCKED away in Jandakot is a small listed company that is growing its business of making and supplying confectionery and bakery filling products to customers around Australia and in South East Asia.
It is also in the throes of relocating the business assets of parts of Sunrise Confectioners that the company bought in June to its Jandakot operations.
Those assets will be merged with its wholesale chocolate and cake topping products of its Chocolate Products of Australia division.
The Sunrise businesses FFI bought produce a range of products including chocmint crunch, humbugs, barley sugar, bulls eyes, 100’s & 1,000’s, cake decoration toppings and licorice bullets.
Besides Chocolate Products the company also runs another division Fresh Food Industries.
Between those two divisions, the company is an industrial supplier to confectionery repackers and also the bulk cabinets in most supermarkets.
Those repackers include the Farmland and Black and Gold brands available on supermarket shelves.
FFI chairman Rodney Moonen said the company sold bakers’ fillings all over Australia.
Those fillings include things such as jam, processed apple, and stabilised fruit products.
The company also produce a range of fresh sausages, bacon and other smallgoods.
Mr Moonen said the business chose to operate from Jandakot because it was "strategically the best place to be".
"Mind you, it doesn’t matter where the business lies given the distribution options these days."
Mr Moonen said the company did a small amount of export, selling its bakers’ fillings into South East Asia.
He said the board, which has remained stable for the past 13 years, had always been trying to grow the company.
Indeed, the Sunrise acquisition is certainly a step in that direction.
In the annual report Mr Moonen says gross revenue from the new business is expected to exceed $3 million per year and the rationalisation of the combined operations is expected to improve profit margins.
The company also enjoyed a good year in 2002-03, posting an after tax profit of $706,446.
On the back of that result the board has recommended a final dividend of 4 cents a share fully franked, taking the total dividend for the year to 7.25 cents.
While the earnings have been good, the company did suffer some difficulties.
Raw material costs where high due to the Australian drought and the decision by major Australian food retailing chains to centralise their purchasing functions impacted on the company’s small good division.
The company listed in 1987 going then by the name of Snowfresh.