Davomas Abadi predicts exceeding profit target

Davomas Abadi predicts exceeding profit target

JAKARTA (JP): PT Davomas Abadi, a cocoa butter and powder producer listed on the Jakarta Stock Exchange, expects to surpass its profit target of Rp 22.83 billion (US$9.9 million) for its 1995 operations, a company executive said.

"During the first 11 months of last year alone, we already posted a net profit of Rp 21.24 billion on total sales of Rp 115 billion," the company's director of finance, Ernas Krisna Mulya, said on Saturday.

He attributed the high profit to the doubling of the company's production capacity from 20,000 tons to 40,000 tons since last July and the increasing demand for cocoa products on the world market.

On raw materials, he said his company had no difficulty in procuring its annual requirement of 50,000 tons from local producers.

Indonesia's cocoa production was estimated to reach around 240,000 tons last year, lower than the forecast of 270,000 tons due to torrential rains that delayed harvests on the key producing region of Sulawesi, which accounts for about 70 percent of the country's total output.

The company's products -- cocoa butter and powder -- are used by down-stream industries as raw materials for making various kinds of medicine and cosmetics and food products such as biscuits, wafers, candy and chewing gum. (13)