BY MATTHEW VARI

AFTER losing up to K28 million in inventory stocks following last June’s fire that gutted its headquarters and warehouse at Gerehu Stage 6 in Port Moresby, City Pharmacy Limited says its rebuilding has started.

CPL Group of Companies managing director Mahesh Patel said this yesterday when announcing the reopening of its flagship Central Waigani supermarket under the Stop & Shop supermarket chain which caught fire in 2015 and the Gerehu fire.

He described the road to recovery as “extremely tough” for the group.

“In June (2017) we lost about K28 million in inventory backup stock, so if you were in any of our stores in the month of June last year it would have been half empty.

‘‘So a lot of disappointed customers and it took us about two to three months to replenish. By that time we had lost a lot of market share and obviously the economy wasn’t helping.

“The foreign exchange issues weren’t quickly replenishing our imported line so I’d say this is the beginning of our rebuilding,” Mr Patel said.

He said the focus for the group remained retaining its staff numbers, which he said the company held on for the sake of its workers.

“The important thing is that we still have the same number of staff, if anything more. We’ve taken a hard call of making sure we don’t retrench anybody because we are talking about the livelihoods of families.

“We are not going anywhere, we are staying in Papua New Guinea, so we needed to make sure the continuity of staff is very important,” Mr Patel said.