2011 ANNUAL REPORT

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I guess the year can be summed up in a single word . . . Frustrating. True we have projects on-going in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam etc. And have many others in the pipeline from Romania to South America, but still the frustration remains.

17 trips abroad, 12 of which were long haul to the Far East and all financed by ourselves, no help of course via any source from banks to overseas British Embassies who, despite several attempts, did not even have the courtesy to answer my emails let alone actually assist us in taking our technology to the biggest market in the world. I can only assume that the well healed pompous idiots that land the title of Trade Advisor in our consulates and embassies only do so in order to take tax payers money to pay for their apartments, salaries and after dinner mints, or should that be Ferrero Rocher ?

Maybe that’s a little unfair, after all one cant expect them to have any interest in either feeding people or helping a small business. Heaven forbid. There are standards to maintain after all.

Add the above to the endless talks in Brussels about Fisheries policies, ( wonder how much money has been spent hosting those pointless and somewhat cosy little  exchanges of underwear over the years ), and the ridiculous policy of quotas in order to decimate yet more species when we have the answer already with our technology and I think it is fair to say that a feeling of frustration is justified.

We have of course contacted every single RH Member of Parliament, I do incidentally have my own interpretation of RH, and every member of the House of Lords . . . more commonly referred to as ‘ Those who walk with the fairies’ , all to no avail. The result of meetings with the SW Business agency resulted in them kindly offering to help us construct a 1 page flyer for local businesses, not sure why, and we were even granted a personal audience with his godliness Mr Geofrey Cox MP who despite many comments to the contrary does actually exist although there have been more documented sightings of the Beast of Exmoor and Alien spacecraft over Plymouth.

His advice based on his salary, skills, contacts and obvious loyalties to both our local community and the UK in general was ?

“Move abroad”,  . . . why didn’t we think of that.

Yet the Far East are eager to exploit our technology, virtually forcing us to move Diobas and all of its ground-breaking and significant technology out of the UK. I guess one day, when the EEC have eaten or destroyed everything with gills, the UK will end up buying Cod and many other species from China . . . .  Not fresh and raised near our cities in our tanks, but frozen and many weeks old, much the same as the stuff we get now from our trawlers at the expense of throwing thousands of tons of dead fish back due to idiotic quotas, nothing new there then. At least the tanks in China will only produce the species we need without waste. Who the hell in the UK knows what a fresh fish tastes like anyway?

Santander, bless their hearts, have tried their utmost to scupper any chance of our success, despite recently putting £500,000 through our account with some quite remarkable growth in terms of our turnover and expansion in both facilities, premises and contacts. Their sheer incompetence and total lack of any interest whatsoever in our company has undoubtedly slowed our progress but I guess without an overdraft or any borrowing they are not content with just hanging on to incoming funds from abroad as long as the law allows and making it pretty nigh impossible to get our own money from our account we just simply are not producing them enough income to even provide basic courtesy when taking on the daunting task of tackling their “ customer advisors ” in their call centres. Personally I am not surprised at the mess created by the banking system . . . running such organisations with the skill and intelligence of lower primates was bound to cause problems eventually. What surprises me is that rather than buy them a few old tyres, some rope and a bunch of bananas we give then around £100 billion, pat their backs and clasp them to our nipples whilst stroking their heads and saying “ Its ok, we’ll look after you, don’t worry”

We all should be grateful after all to be part of such fine institutions. Bankers ( had to be careful with the spelling ), Insurance companies, Estate agents, MP’s and various other upstanding citizens are essential to ensure the wheels of industry grind to a halt . . . . That is the point of all this right? We need companies going bankrupt, people being thrown out of their homes, manufacturing destroyed, small businesses decimated, strikes and riots. Why else would those in power take the path they have? I don’t understand what its all about of course, I don’t have the intelligence, not being a member of the local Freemasons or Rotary club, so I have to show the blind faith demanded of all such lesser beings that are simply there to be lied too and vote every 4 years. I know my place and are eternally grateful to all those mentioned above for saving me and my company from doing something stupid . . .Like trying to grow our business, bring in overseas currency and take our technology to the planet that is in desperate need of the food it can provide.

My gratitude is boundless.

I know what you are thinking . . . the opening page of this summary of 2011 is just a grumpy old man wasting his breath. Not so.

Old yes, grumpy most certainly, but not a waste of breath. You’ll understand why later in this report.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE ?

There are a number of options.

1) We take an offer from an American group of £140M and walk away from everything Diobas has achieved. They are heavily tied to trawler fleets, processing plants, transport, supermarkets and so on across America. Our technology will destroy their current operation. Providing fish producing tanks alongside major cities in every state does after all make their current operation look a little stupid in terms of caring for the oceans stocks, carbon emissions, providing fresh sustainable fish and all the rest of the factors that we are all supposed to care about.. Will they ever use our technology ? I think it is inevitable . . . .one day that is, . .  when they have had time to scale down their current operation and sending trawlers to sea becomes unviable because there is nothing left to catch.

As far as Diobas is concerned we can all walk away with a large profit. Forget all we stand for, acquire Ferraris, 100ft yachts, gout and bellies that would mirror un upturned whale ( there will be plenty of those too if we do not stop killing them ) Sorry, better retract that. We do after all have the might of the Japanese and their on-going research into Blue whales . . . .does involve killing all of them for the market of course but hey . . . everything has a price right ?

2) We accept the many offers to license our technology to individual countries or regions. Bids have recently come in from Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the jewel in the crown, China . . .as well as Brunei and many others. These bids vary from £2m to £25m for a 15 year sole license to use our technology plus we can negotiate a percentage of crop over the 15 year cycle. Each large tank produces 70 tonnes of fish per year, from Giant Grouper to Bluefin Tuna and the more obvious Cod etc. The percentage varies on the size of the operation and species selection but on average gives us around £60k per year per tank. With for instance 5,000 tanks a distinct possibility in China alone inside 5 years and you can see the annual income potential . . . and this would still only provide a tiny fraction of the consumer need for fish in China alone. Wonderful I hear you say . . . but there are problems. We are a small company, we just do not have the infrastructure to handle such a large scale operation both in terms of module production and also in administration. We cannot get the modules manufactured in the UK . . . we have already spent many months and endless meetings trying to place such a contract but always end up with taking the manufacturing to the Far East where both factory owners and their bankers are eager for business.

We would need to expand at a rapid rate with offices in every Far Eastern location that requests a licence. We would need to set up manufacturing plants for the modules themselves everywhere that was logical to do so to save shipping and transport costs and to keep our carbon footprint within the companies ethics and would need management we can trust to oversee the myriad of projects and ensure that fish welfare remains paramount.

 Eating them is fine, but we have a duty of care to every living thing, it is their right.

Add the obvious need to create a Head Office, equipped to deal with every enquiry across the globe, deal with clients problems and oversee a quite vast operation, the computers and technology involved and a very strong senior management team and we are realistically looking at an awesome task.  Finance is not a problem, we may need to bridge the initial drive forward but this would soon be self financing as the license fees would be more than adequate to set it all up and run until the first crops provided an income. We have established many valuable contacts in the last 12 months. From cafes in Ho Chi Mihn city to meetings in Singapore . . . I have been busy. Many such contacts can be rejected but there have been many valuable ones. For instance, there are a host of capable people out there, I have met many from Wendy and Derek in Singapore to Lance and Dexter in Romania, all of whom are certainly capable and skilled enough to slowly undertake what would be an incredible challenge.

Our existing team can hardly be disregarded, we have achieved a great deal on our own already.

A realistic and entirely honest assessment of Diobas potential, based on all factors that I do not have time to detail, would bring in to Diobas a gross income of £500m per year in 3 years. Rising to £950m per year in five years. That’s a lot of Ferrero Rocher don’t you think ?

Makes £140m for an outright sale to the American consortium somewhat miniscule.

But we have another problem . .  . me.

Because if the expansion route is the one to take then we need to look at a five year program and I do not want everything that goes with it. You will all need to find another MD, and I am sure there are many capable of taking Diobas forward. The last 8 years have been tough and I need to move on to other things. Old and grumpy is ok, old grumpy and dead isn’t. Without wishing to sound unreasonably dramatic, I need to rest now.

Frustration is something I have had enough of, for now at least.

Each day now I will add to the report . . . . watch this space, Against my nature but may actually annoy someone.

More of this report will be added each day until completed.