Fabrinox’s FY2021/22 in Review

Dear Friends of Fabrinox

Since the January newsletter two unsettling events happened, Russia invaded Ukraine 24 February 2022 and The London Metal Exchange (LME) was forced to halt nickel trading and cancel trades after prices doubled to more than $100,000 per tonne, 8 March 2022.

The war has had a global impact on us all and we hope to continue our business activities in these countries once things have settled.

Since nickel trading has a more direct impact on specific industries and customers in stainless steel trading and fabrication, such as ourselves, we experienced sharp price increases over the past 6 months.

With our financial year end this past May, we saw clearly that our business did not escape the consequences of these disruptive events. Projects were canceled due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and Belarus and we saw a damper on stainless steel intensive capital projects.

All things considered, we are blessed to announce a strong recovery in demand and a decent year-on-year sales growth. The focused efforts over the past 12 months positioned the company to invest in new technology to increase throughput and capacity. Phase one, which includes the expansion of Fabrinox’s warehouse, will be completed by December 2022 and the equipment will be in full production by end of January 2023, with further automation in material handling by the end of March 2023.

My sincerest thanks to all our loyal customers for your support and great pipeline. We are excited to unlock the value of the efforts, lessons learned over the past 12 months, and the investment in our staff and technology.

Kind regards,

André Visser