The Blue Power Group Ltd which makes soaps and sells lumber continues to push for exports in an effort to boost its sagging profits.

The latest includes targeting exports to Guyana.

“In the Blue Power division, we resumed sales to one of our major customers while shipping a number of containers of laundry soap to Guyana,” stated chairman Dhiru Tanna in a statement prefacing the financials.

The company posted $18.6 million in net profit after tax on $301 million in revenue for its July first-quarter 2015 or one-third lower profit than a year earlier. Exports form part of the company’s strategy to boost profits hurt by cheaper imports into Jamaica and reduced disposable income from key consumers.

Quarterly sales actually grew 8.6 per cent over year-earlier levels, but annual sales remain flat at $1 billion for two consecutive years.

Blue Power said it recently appointed an ‘excited’ distributor in Guyana keen on selling its range of Blue Power products. It also changed its distributors in the USA to Iberia Foods Corp. “who are well known” especially in the expanding “ethnic markets”. Iberia services more than 10,000 supermarkets, club stores, wholesalers and distributors in eastern USA. Blue Power expects that their focus on the Hispanic and Caribbean markets will help to boost its laundry soap sales.

In its financial year ending April 2015, export sales grew by one-third year on year to $35.6 million. However, exports still account for roughly 3.0 per cent of total $1 billion in annual sales.

Blue Power paid $2.2 million in corporate taxation as part of its first full quarter since returning to pay some level of income tax. The company received a 10-year tax holiday as a consequence of listing on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange in April 2010. The first five years ending April 2015 offer a full tax break, with subsequent years offering a tax rate equivalent to half the going tax rate.

As reported by the Business Observer on Wednesday, the company also announced in its annual report that it will sell its soaps in the MegaMart shopping chain exposing its products to a whole new retail market beyond wholesalers and handcart vendors. This is aimed at improving sales which remain at $1 billion for two consecutive years.

Tanna added in the annual report that Blue Power continues to seek out other retailer space, but finds this difficult. Blue Power currently manufactures Castile soap and makes soap for AriLabs, GraceKennedy, and Lasco.

In the previous financial year Blue Power invested in producing new soaps, new packaging and new advertising.