Surveyor Indonesia ties up with Lloyd's Register
Surveyor Indonesia ties up with Lloyd's Register
JAKARTA (JP): State-owned PT Surveyor Indonesia, after loosing
its preshipment inspection contract with the government, tied up
yesterday with Lloyd's Register of England to become more
competitive in the inspection business.
Surveyor Indonesia director of finance, Toga M. Sitompul, said
the joint operation agreement with Lloyd's would help save
Surveyor Indonesia from closing down its overseas branches.
"Today should have been a cloudy day for us. But it turned out
to be a sunny day, especially after the signing of the joint
operation agreement with Lloyd's," Toga said.
Faried S. Barchia, president of Surveyor Indonesia, and Peter
Holland of Lloyd's Register signed the agreement yesterday.
Under the agreement, all Lloyd's businesses in Indonesia would
coordinate with Surveyor Indonesia, and vice versa: all Surveyor
Indonesia's overseas businesses would coordinate with Lloyd's.
Holland, Lloyd's regional director, said the cooperation
should rationalize Lloyd's activities in Indonesia, which were
currently overseen directly from its regional office in
Singapore.
Last year, Surveyor Indonesia also signed a memorandum of
understanding with German surveyor firm TUV Nord to set up a
joint operation in the field of ISO-9000 and ISO-14000
certification.
Faried said the joint operation with Lloyd's would help bring
a new dimension to Surveyor Indonesia as it had lost its import
inspection job from the government as of yesterday.
He said Surveyor Indonesia had been diversifying its business
into environmental management, trade assistance, business
information and quality assurance.
Toga said his company would continue to generate revenue from
inspection services despite the termination of the import-
inspection contract with the Indonesian government.
He predicted the company would manage to collect a total
revenue of Rp 213 billion this year (US$88 million), of which Rp
158 billion would be derived from preshipment inspections in the
first three months of the year.
The company's total assets stood at some Rp 200 billion as of
last month.
Last year, the company recorded a total revenue of Rp 550
billion and net profit of Rp 70 billion, up from Rp 25 billion in
1995 and Rp 13 billion in 1994.
He said Lloyd's would help manage its overseas branches in 17
major cities, spreading from Durban in South Africa to Rotterdam
in the Netherlands, Toronto in Canada, New York in the United
States and Sydney in Australia.
"No other single Indonesian company has such extensive
overseas branches as we do. So we want to maintain such valuable
assets as long as we can because it is not easy to open such
branches in developed countries," Toga said.
To reduce operation costs, Toga said, his company was in the
process of dismissing some 500 foreign personnel at its 17
foreign branches.
The company was established in 1991 by the government, in a
joint venture with Geneva-based Societe Generale de Surveillance
(SGS), to take over the inspection of Indonesian imports at
points of loading from SGS which had carried out the work since
mid-1985.
SGS had since 1991 acted as Surveyor Indonesia's subcontractor
in conducting import inspections.
The directorate general resumes its inspection authority over
exports and imports starting today, when the 1995 customs law and
new customs procedures come into force. (rid)