The global economic recession, precipitated by the financial crisis, impacted on all major trading countries, including Malaysia, which is a world-ranking exporter/importer nation. With the contraction of the demand in traditional markets like the US (which accounts for 13 per cent of Malaysia's exports), Singapore, Japan as well as EU, Malaysia's overall trade volume also fell in tandem.

As trade volume fell, so did demand for shipping services and this impacted on demand for port services. As with most ports, Northport was also impacted by this weakened demand, however the scale or the magnitude of the decline was not steep or as traumatic as experienced by several major ports.

We kept our focus by continuing to ensure a higher level of service and productivity notwithstanding the weak market condition we were facing. This was more relevant and all the more necessary to both users of our services and facilities and we as provider of the services and operator of the facilities. We focused on more value for money to our users which probably is more valued in times of adversity than in prosperity.

A major thrust of this approach was to derive better value in the deployment of our assets, including manpower. Yard optimization measures for instance offers scope for handling more containers within the given space and time, and this in logistics translates into money, both to the user and provider of the service.

We also actively started "addressing" cost which is different from cost-cutting measures which organizations often easily resort to when facing difficult times. By addressing cost, which includes simply taking a look at the time taken in particular job function/task, we become more efficient in the delivery of our service. Cost-cutting measures could be counter-productive especially when the market is in the upswing and the response to it may not be forth coming because of lack of resources to do so.

The result of our response to the downturn has been fully reflected in our financial performance. Although traffic volume handled went down during the year, we posted a satisfactory performance with PBT increasing to RM167.3 million from RM163.8 million on the back of a turnover of RM831.4 million.

On the whole, Northport is looking forward towards a bright 2010.