Beach Hatchery resumes production after more than 5 years

Beach Hatchery Limited started its production activities after more than five years from Sunday. 

Back on April 24, 2016, the entire operation of the company was halted as the factory was dismantled by the government to construct the marine drive road in Cox’s Bazar.

Some portion of the land constituting of hatchery plant was also acquired by the government authority, the company claimed in a filing with Dhaka Stock Exchange on December 2019. 

However, in May 2017, the construction of the Marine Drive road from Cox's Bazar to Teknaf was completed. But the publicly listed company still failed to restart its operation. 

As a result, the shareholders of the company continued to be deprived of dividends since the company has been incurring losses. 

Company Secretary of Beach Hatchery Md Nur Islam told the Business Insider Bangladesh that the start of production was delayed due to the death of one of the entrepreneurs of the company.

In a filing with Dhaka Stock Exchange on Monday, the company said that it will restart the operation with white fish, including Telapia, Koi, Pangsh and Pabda using the intensive culture method. 

The production capacity will be around 105 tonnes per year initially. The company will be using 15 concrete tanks, each with 55,000 litres of water holding capacity. 

The company further said that the production process will constitute hatchery unit, nursery unit, pre-grow out, grow out, harvesting and sale. 

They will also organically increase the production capacity gradually, using existing structures that remain unutilised. 

Starting its business back in 1997, Beach Hatchery got enlisted to both Dhaka and Chattogram stock exchanges in 2002. 

Back in December 2014, the same year the company started its operation, it offered a 5 percent bonus dividend to its shareholders. This was the last time the company offered dividend to its shareholders. 

Back then, the company’s total revenue was Tk13.16 crore. The net profit after tax was Tk2.11 crore with earnings per share (EPS) of Tk0.54. 

After that, the company’s earnings started to fall and in the third quarter (January-March) 2020, its EPS was 0.23 in the negative as against Tk 0.08 in the negative for the same period in 2019.