Gio Recycling, a waste management business, and its Managing
Director 'Ofa Tu'ikolovatu are a visible part of Tonga's business
landscape. Ms Tu'ikolovatu is well known and respected in business
and in the community for her efforts to reduce waste in Tonga. She
describes herself as a scrap broker - she buys and sells scrap. Her
aim is to clean up Tonga; providing employment, she says, is really
a bonus.
But trading in Tonga is not always easy. Tonga shares the
challenge of most small island states: the dependence on other
nations' goods and services. The reliance on shipping and transport
networks for exporting and importing is an everyday challenge, with
most businesses in Tonga continuing to find the process of clearing
customs costly and time-consuming. A male-dominated culture on the
wharves makes the challenges even greater for women in
business.
So Ms Tu'ikolovatu has needed to be creative in her approach to
trading across borders. Although her business is small, she now
employs a dedicated customs broker, for efficiency and to comply
with recent government regulations. Like other business owners in
Tonga, she laments the cost to business in time, goods tied up on
the wharves and the need for assistance when dealing with
customs.
She began Gio Recycling in 2003 as a sideline to an automotive
shop started by her father and carried on by her husband for some
20 years. Continued demand has meant the recycling business has now
become the primary focus of Gio.
The company's work entails collecting and packing scrap, often
metals, that they then ship and sell. Copper, aluminium, stainless
steel and even abandoned motor vehicles can be recycled. The
business exports metal to a scrap recycler in New Zealand and paper
and plastics to a firm in Brisbane, Australia.
Gio employs seven staff members; this can go up to 14 at peak
times. Because of the heavy physical nature of the work, most of
the employees are men. Ms Tu'ikolovatu estimates annual turnover to
be around $100,000.
She works in the office five days each week. On the sixth day
she works at local flea markets, selling perfume that she imports
from the United States and Singapore and clothes from the United
States. It takes one month to receive these imported goods, at an
approximate cost of $1,800 per delivery.
Overcoming challenges
Freight costs, machinery maintenance and staffing are Gio's main
expenses. At busy times, Gio Recycling exports between seven and
ten containers a month; at around $650 per container, the costs
certainly add up. Each time Ms Tu'ikolovatu exports to her key
clients in Australia and New Zealand, the company has to complete
seven documents, which can be time-consuming and laborious. With
even the slightest error, the forms need to be resubmitted; this
part of the process alone can take up to a week.
In December 2008, the Government imposed new regulations that
each importing or exporting business must use a certified customs
broker. In compliance, and in a bid to make her dealings with
customs more efficient, Ms Tu'ikolovatu helped a staff member to
study for the difficult customs exam and, once he had passed, paid
his licence fee of approximately $2,500. He is still one of only a
handful of customs brokers in Tonga.
In the rush to clean up Tonga for the new king's coronation
celebrations in mid-2008, Gio Recycling gained a government
contract to collect over 2,000 abandoned cars from across the main
island of Tonga'tapu. These cars were to be crushed and exported to
her client in New Zealand. The only problem was that Gio didn't
have the car-crushing machinery. Undeterred, Ms Tu'ikolovatu leased
land from the Government to store the cars on and sourced the
machinery from Australia, which arrived some months later.
Training across borders
Ms Tu'ikolovatu frequently travels for work, mostly to New
Zealand, Australia and the United States. "I really enjoy these
chances to learn more," she says. She learnt about the value of
cross-country learning from her work at Royal Tongan Airlines
before starting Gio, and now affords the same opportunities to her
employees. She knows of just one other company in Tonga that
facilitates such overseas training programmes for staff.
The overseas work placements enable staff to visit the office of
Gio's client in New Zealand and to learn about freight, safety,
packing of containers and treatment of machines. Gio covers all
costs, pays their wages while overseas and applies for the
one-month working visa on their behalf. Her longest-serving
employee has been with Gio for three years; during this time he
worked for almost eight months with a freighting company
overseas.
The placements are not only an investment in staff, but in the
business at large, and have even generated new ideas for its
operation. For example, returning from a placement, an employee
suggested changing the working hours to avoid sweltering in the
middle hours of the day. Initially other staff were resistant to
the change and it was not implemented, says Ms Tu'ikolovatu, but
they later agreed it would be better and now enjoy the
arrangement.
On women in business
In 2007, Ms Tu'ikolovatu won Tonga's Westpac Business Woman of
the Year Award, which recognizes the important role women play in
families, communities, public enterprise and business. Through the
networking and travel opportunities afforded by the award, she
learnt more about waste management, including how to treat waste
and how dangerous it can be if burnt. "I learnt not just for me but
for all of Tonga," she says.
Indeed, her business has made a substantial contribution to the
country's environment. For example, Ms Tu'ikolovatu was a key
participant in the AusAID-funded Tonga Solid Waste Management
Programme, which focused on recycling practices in Tonga. The
recycling and waste management industry is a significant
contributor to beautifying Tonga and improving living standards for
both residents and visitors. "But there is so much more to be
done," she says.
"In the face of men in business, women are still a minority.
Women are too often held back by not knowing what they want and how
to get the information they need," she says. She believes women
should speak out and seize opportunities to broaden their
experience through international travel, create regional networks,
develop mentor relations and foster knowledge and capacity-building
partnerships.
"Our culture fits women under its wings," she adds. "If it were
just me (without my husband in the business), it's true that I
could still keep the shop running, just not the auto mechanics side
of the business… now I take strength from knowing that if anything
happens to my husband, I will survive."