Business

Pipeline infrastructure group aligns, recapitalises to boost business

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1 year ago

Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited and its group, comprising Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited, Ocean Marine Solutions, and Delta Pacific Marine Services, have come together to develop an aligned direction for their businesses with the aim of sustaining its leadership in its core business area, increasing market share, and boosting revenue.

The group also declared its intentions to immediately recapitalize to support its plans to boost investment in new areas of business in order to increase revenue generation and profit for the companies and their shareholders.

These plans were made public last week by the directors of the company during a 3-day corporate retreat for the directors and top management cadre of the companies at the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel, Ikot Ekpene, Akwa-Ibom State.

The retreat, which had as its theme “Developing an Aligned Direction,” was facilitated by PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC to enable the directors and management of the three companies to review their operations to create an aligned direction for the group.

It involved extensive sessions of brainstorming collectively and in groups, assessment of performance, challenges, opportunities, and strategies for meeting targets and setting new ones. Social programmes were also carefully and masterfully included in the 3-day event, which helped to keep it deeply engaging and lively.

Three of the directors of the companies, namely, Osahon Hosa Okunbo, Anita Aikhomu, and Nicholas Rhodes, spoke to the press about the essence of the retreat, which is the first ever since the over 16 years of operations of the companies.

Osahon explained that the “mind of the board in planning this retreat was a platform for the management to express themselves and to build a strong bridge between the board and management.

Anita agreed with him, saying, “We are all trying to align ourselves for sustainable growth in the business. So we’re trying to brainstorm, see where all our heads are, and see what we can do to make the business grow.”.

Rhodes added that the retreat “gives the team the opportunity to interact with the directors and vice versa to understand what works and what doesn’t work and allows us to guide the business in the best possible way, and it’s been very useful in that respect.”

He said the engagement has helped the directors to see “an alignment on the opportunities, more priority on that in the market, and I think we have some key action points that will help us reinvigorate areas of the business, drive it forward, and engage the staff with the stakeholders of the entire business as well as the directors and shareholders.

“So I think we have been able to get much more clarity on what direction we want to take, how we want to ensure the longevity of the business, and how we can engage the stakeholders and the staff to build a better business going forward.”

According to Osahon, “One major outcome we are hoping to achieve, which I think we are on the good side of achieving, is a strategy of implementation. So it’s been very engaging; directors have heard from management and management from directors, put out the problems, and are hoping to develop implementable solutions.

The major hope for us is that, at the end of the day, the executive management is able to push down that strategy to the lower subordinates to be able to implement the strategy on the ground level. So that’s, for me, the major thing we plan to achieve.”.

He used the opportunity to assure that the board would certainly inject more funds into the business by way of recapitalization, urging prudent management of such resources to achieve the set target, even as he warned that waste would not be condoned but rather tracked and reprimanded.

“We are going to inject some more capital in the right places. I think that is the next engagement we are going to have at the board and shareholder level. Definitely, there’s going to be a recapitalization across the companies.

“With that is going to come a lot of tracking. We are going to implement heavy, heavy tracking. Everybody has to be responsible. We are going to trust you to spend the money, but if you waste it, there will be repercussions.”

He reminded participants of the core values of the foundation chairman of the companies, urging them to continue to hold tightly to those values of innovation, hard work, and commitment.

Osahon said, “Hard work, commitment, and innovation are things I want us to hold very dear. Let’s work together; it’s a joint responsibility for all of us. Every single person here is a leader in his department.

“Most of the people here have been with the company for 10 or more years. Most of the people here have seen the transformation both financially; you’ve seen the highs and the lows. You have a responsibility to yourself, to your profession, to the company, and actually to Nigeria because there is a responsibility that comes with being a market leader.”

He described the retreat as a wonderful time and expressed appreciation to the facilitators, PwC, for the professionalism and expertise exhibited in facilitating the programme.

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