Williams Industries Inc.
Chairman’s Report to the Shareholders
For the year ended December 31 st 2008
Port St. Charles Development
Port St. Charles received conditional approval for the development of a new marina at Retreat in 2008. Other than that the company ran without any major events. Williams Industries Inc. benefited from a $768,000 contribution to our consolidated profit from this investment in 2008.
Lagoon
Our investment in the Lagoon project adjacent to Port St. Charles remained dormant in 2008. We do not expect any movement in this project until there is a robust recovery in the global economy since it will depend mainly on the sale properties to foreigners.
Foursquare Estates Limited
During 2008 FEL acquired Hill View Estates from Sir John Goddard for $12,500,000. This 53 acre property will be developed for middle and high income homes. The development of affordable homes at Emerald Park in St. Philip continued throughout the year with no let up in the demand for these homes produced by Caribbean Homes. Because of the very protracted time taken by the Town Planning department to issue certificates of Compliance after homes are completed, FEL was heading for cash flow shortage as 2008 ended and the situation is expected to get worse in 2009. As a result our investment in FEL did not yield any cash flow for Williams Industries inc. in 2008 but the investment is considered to be a very good appreciating asset with potential to spin off cash in the future.
Caribbean Homes Ltd.
Caribbean Homes in which Williams Industries owns 14% got off to a running start in 2008 with the production of one complete home per day. So great was the demand for the homes that an expansion of the factory to produce 2.4 homes per day was started. This was expected to place considerable pressure on the financial resources of Foursquare Estates Ltd. for which CHL is building homes at Emerald Park. The reason being that homes cannot be sold and conveyed until the Town Planning office issues certificates of compliance and this had become a serious problem by the end of 2008. FEL therefore could not collect payment for the homes built but was required to pay CHL for them.
Harrison Point
As the new government settled in at the beginning of 2008 a new Board was appointed to BTI and this board set out to change virtually all of the terms of our agreement to develop Harrison Point into a major foreign exchange earning tourism project. The revised terms made continuing with this project totally unrealistic especially as the world recession dried up available finance for projects like this. A decision was therefore forced on us to halt our development of this project until conditions became more favorable and Government changed thinking to give the project a fair chance to succeed. At the end of 2008 we had invested a total of $359,309 in this project.
Paradise Four Seasons
At the end of 2008 we had not done much business with this project but our relations with the project management had improved and we expected to do a lot of business in 2009.
