62 INTEGRATED ANNUAL REPORT 2023 One of my favourite quotes that came out during the COVID pandemic was: So, in retrospect, in 2015, not a single person got the answer right to “Where do you see yourself five years from now?” Another three years on and we could still be saying this. The challenges we are facing in business today are not the same as they were five years ago. We are constantly finding that the controllable problems are less so while the uncontrollable are increasing and we must review and adjust how we do the things we have always done. We set our exchange rate budget for the year at R15.30/ US$ and we achieved it for a few days in March, another few days in April and one more in June, before it weakened for the rest of the year, reaching a high point around yearend. Although this is generally not good for South Africa, it helped us to achieve, along with higher export sales than previously achieved, a record turnover for the year of over R3.2 billion. Export volumes sold increased by 10% over the prior year and the three mills chipped a combined volume of 1.7 million tonnes of logs. Aside from good market access for timber supply, these results have also allowed us to give a number of price Chief Financial Officer’s Report K E R RY MO F F E T T increases as well as doubling up the GSC premium paid for accurate supply. I noted last year that the average exchange rate achieved on export receipts in the 2022 financial year was R1.42 less than the prior year. For 2023, the rate achieved was R1.90 more than in 2022. This illustrates the fickleness of the exchange rate, and we must always be cognisant of this. Although we will take advantage when it is in our favour, and increase prices or bonuses where possible, we still need to be aware that these peaks may be temporary. Over the last few years, we have been reviewing the structure of the NCT group to streamline operations and administration as well as maximise distributable income for our members. This project is ongoing and has yielded positive results during this financial year. Some of the changes have resulted in some unusual variances in our results. At the beginning of the year, we decided to cease splitting the costs of operational and shared administrative staff between Richards Bay Wood Chips (RBWC) and BayFibre (Pty) Ltd (BayFibre), and to retain the cost of all staff employed by NCT within RBWC. This has resulted in reduced contract chipping
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