Hi there, just about at the end of the year I wanted to share some really good news with you.

You’ll recall (http://www.supplycs.com/budget-update/) there is a 3.2% labour increase for most SCS customers due in April next year, this is the second of two increases related to our strategy to lift lower paid staff to a living wage of 38.5k/annum (gross) or 16.50/hour based on a 45 hour week.

The social impact and the impact on these staff and their families can not be understated and to say they have been grateful for your support would be an understatement.

The good news I’m delighted to share with you is that we’ve able to manage our facility costs better than expected due to a contractual clause we negotiated at the beginning of the leases for 11 Timberly and 74 Westney. So what this means is that there will be no storage increases for customers at these sites. As storage increases are calculated every two years this means that clients in these facilities will end up having no storage increase for 4 years. As the last storage increase was only 4 cents I think you can see this is extraordinary, the next storage reviews are due Q4 2016. Merry Christmas!

The other good news is that FAF is dropping in line with reduced pump prices at last for the first time in memory, I haven’t checked the CP site but the bulk FAF is about to drop around 2%. Happy new year!

The final bit of really good news is that the FAF reduction and storage benefit will go so far mitigating the labour increase that in fact these offsets will mean a net reduction in total cost for most customers even after the labour increase is taken into account. Tis the time to be merry!

So that’s amazing, you help deserving kiwis who work hard gain a better life and save money at the same time – truely a great way to end the year.

Cheers

Brad