The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

An Abaco-based timber harvesting company expects to bring its first line of inventory to market within the next two weeks, telling Tribune Business it had received a strong reception in the Bahamian market already by securing pre-sales of 15,000 board feet.

Rob Roman, principal of Lindar Industries, which has a licence to harvest timber in the Bahamas, told Tribune Business that in about 10-12 days the company would have roughly 8,000 board feet ready for sale.

“A lot of it is pre-sold; actually more than the 8,000 is sold,” he said. “We have about 15,000 board feet sold already.

“Everything we’re bringing out of kiln this time will not go to fill that order because some of the stuff that’s being dried is not the right size. We’ll have some inventory, but very little on hand until the next round of drying comes through.

“Pretty much everything that’s available has been pre-sold,” Mr Roman added. “We have three pretty sizable orders we have to pre-fill before we can stock any inventory. We’re trying to do some samples for the various things it intends to make, such as moldings and door casings.

“If pre-sales are any indication of the consumer confidence we’re going to have in the product, then I think things are going to go quite well.”

“Right now we are primarily marketing locally. We have had a very good reception, as there are a lot of people that are interested. They are mainly saying that they want us to get some more product so that they can buy because we don’t have a lot of inventory. What we’re doing right now is now is trying to generate some inventory.”

Mr Roman said Lindar, which has six direct employees at present, was about a week into production. “We have moved into production on a temporary basis. We set up some temporary facility, we’re still running that, but we’re moving into a warehouse where we are going to be setting up our permanent facilities which we just have to do some renovations to,” he added.

“We are still doing some planning for that, so I expect in a month to a month and a half. We will continue to produce product at our temporary facility.Right now we are probably cutting about 2,000 board feet per day. It’s a little less than expected, because we are a little fragmented right now, but with the new facility we will have a much more streamlined operation.”