looking good

http://seven.com.au/news/technology/153440
Cumminscorp looking to overseas growth
Date: 16/03/06
By Chris Herde



Environmental technology company Cumminscorp Ltd is confident its revolutionary aquaculture units will perform strongly in the international market.

The Gold Coast-based company debuted on the Australian Stock Exchange on Thursday on par with its issue price of 20 cents.

It closed at 15 cents with a turnover of 2.35 million shares.

Established in 2003, the Cumminscorp has three divisions - C-Box, C-Wash and C-Clean which respectively research and develop environmentally friendly aquaculture; waste water treatment and environmental water remediation systems.

Inventor and managing director Ian Cummins said the C-Box division had started manufacturing its 18-square metre $50,000 aquaculture systems while the other divisions were still in the research and development phase.

He said there has been much interest overseas in the aquaculture system with a number of "orders on stream".

"We are keen to expand in Australia and we intend to go fairly hard," Mr Cummins said.

"We have a product that no one in the world has so we really have a market and we think we can expand this overseas and around the world at a fairly fast rate."

Mr Cummins said while aquaculture was the most advanced part of the business in the future he expected the water remediation and water cleansing divisions to account for 90 per cent of the business.

The float raised $5.42 million shares from the sale of about 27 million shares, which was at the bottom end of the company's expectations.

It had planned to raise between $4 million and $15 million from the issue of 20 million to 75 million shares.

The funds raised will be used to promote its products and make them ready for commercialisation.

Cumminscorp made a net loss of $1.94 million for the half year ended December 31, compared to a loss of $1.63 million in the previous corresponding period.

Mr Cummins, who with his wife owns between 61 and 62 per cent of the company, said he will not make any forecasts on future earnings.

"We haven't deliberately made a forecast because some of the markets are very large that we are looking into," he said.

"We have always been a company that delivered more than we promised and we want to remain like that."