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Joviality: The order of the day at Princess Brand

2022-04-29  Staff Reporter

Joviality: The order of the day at Princess Brand

The onshore horse mackerel processing factory, Seaflower Pelagic Processing (SPP), situated in Walvis Bay, has successfully rebranded to align the company name with the brand name after this was suggested by the employees. 

All the legal and relevant processes were finalised on 31 January 2022, and the company officially started operating as Princess Brand Processing (PBP) from February this year.

 According to the general manager of PBP, Adolf Burger, the idea to rebrand came from the employees, who were eager to start afresh without the negativity that has shrouded the company for the past two years.

Burger went on to explain that Princess is a well-established and reputable pilchard brand of AST, so it only made sense to introduce their canned horse mackerel to the existing brand.

 “Our Princess Pilchards is very popular in Southern Africa, especially in countries such as Mozambique, South Africa and Angola.  Our new canning facility will now also produce the Princess brand. Hence, the rebranding made it easy for us to enter the existing market with our canned horse mackerel by aligning the company name with the brand,” Burger explained.

 

The journey 

 

Eighteen months ago, permanent employees were retrenched due to the insecure and precarious position the company found itself due to differences among shareholders. 

Two years down the line, we are still oblivious to what caused this situation. 

The same fate hit our 600 fixed term contract (FTC) workers very hard – and suddenly, 650 family’s lives were shattered. 

During the months leading up to this retrenchment, employees decided to take matters into their own hands and engaged with various stakeholders. 

An all-staff peaceful protest took place, and a petition was handed to the governor of the Erongo region – all to no avail. Consequently, many of our staff left.

The 600 FTC employees got offered a deal to “stay at home with pay” by Fishcor. 

Approximately 200 of these workers decided to remain with the company, and so did most of the previous skilled force who remained on a three-month contract basis to work as and when required. 

Our doors remained open for staff who left, and we have re-employed a significant number of ex-workers. 

“If the company has work, then they are happy to share; if they do not have fish, then no income is expected – and we understand it is impossible to employ us. The company has been making monthly ex-gracia payments to us since last year in the months they did not have any fish or income. We know this must be very difficult,” remarked one of the employees.

We lost many skills – yet, at the same time, the current non-permanent staff stepped up, and not only did the work done by staff who left, but also that of superiors who left. 

The company started advertising internally amongst the factory staff for various skilled positions in areas such as human resource, marketing, admin as well as production.

 We found many post-graduates, and they jumped in the deep end to get the workload done.

 

New beginning

 

As from 1 April, all the ex-permanent skilled staff were once again permanently employed, and the 600 factory workers reinstated with FTC until 31 December 2022. 

The company is committed to offering these loyal and hardworking staff permanent positions. 

We had fruitful discussions in the first week of April in support of the company. 

We all understand the difficulty and hardship the company is going through and has been subjected to for the past two years, and believe our shareholders are committed to resolving these matters.

It is miraculous that the company managed to complete its cannery during the past two extremely challenging years, which is due to be commissioned soon. 

This will result in approximately 450 new jobs for our brothers and sisters desperately looking for jobs in Namibia. 

Our horse mackerel resource TAC is 330 000 tons a year, and we are certain the new cannery division will be a flagship for the industry. 

The only thing needed to secure this is fish!


2022-04-29  Staff Reporter

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