Hello Family and Friends:
Day late and a dollar short, didn’t feel up to writing a letter yesterday. When I got home from church I went to the plant, ate dinner, worked out for about an hour and didn’t feel like doing anything else. So I didn’t.
It was an exciting week but probably just for me. Bankers were here on Wednesday. I guess the way the debt is financed on the plant is that the parent company, Tata has the debt on their books. They want it off their books and on the plant books. So the bankers were here to look at the plant and determine if the plant could handle the debt load. I just give the tours and answer the technical questions (can you believe it mom, me answering technical questions). Don’t know how it will turn out. After I got done with them, all the finance types from corporate and the plant locked themselves in a room to discuss money.
Then on Wednesday night and Thursday the Board of Directors met. My part went well. They are pleased at the progress made in improving quality and reliability. But the message was clear; there has been a lot of work done to improve things: now, make some Soda Ash. So the pressure is on. The soda ash market is sold out. Whatever can be produced can be sold and in addition to that, prices are going up. So this situation doesn’t happen very often where prices are good and demand is good too. So like I said the pressure is on. Need to impress on everyone here that we have to perform.
Also discussed with the board the need to rationalize the workforce (polite way of saying there needs to be a lay-off). So they are bought into the idea. There are so many people here, they are literally tripping over each other. I have never seen such an inefficient work force in my life. The view is that labor is cheap, so let’s give everyone a job. Labor may be cheap, but there is still a cost associated with every worker. Magadi Soda also provides housing and utilities for every worker. So the cost to the company is not just for wages but it is for maintaining housing and utilities for every worker. So anyway, I’ll keep you posted on those efforts. We will start rationalizing the workforce in July.
And now to my African experience for the week. I’ve talked about bugs before. I have never seen so many different kinds of bugs. It’s almost like there is a bug du jour of the week. This week it was grass hoppers. There were big green and brown ones. They almost made a carpet in front of my office. There are also a lot of stick bugs (praying mantis). They are really cool, I know my boys would love them. They get quite big, not like horror movie big but there were some that were 4 inches long.
Well maybe something exciting will happen next week to add a little flavor to the letter but not this week.
Later, love
Paul/dad
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