4 weeks ago
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Buoyed by the success of its small northern hub, and smarting from the effects of Hurricane Beryl, manufacturing and distribution company Wisynco Group Limited is moving to set up an even larger hub on the southern side of Jamaica.
Chairman William Mahfood told shareholders at the company’s seventh annual general meeting Thursday that the company has purchased land in southern Jamaica to build out the new hub. Speaking after the meeting, Mahfood told the Financial Gleaner that Wisynco recently acquired the land, having closed the deal in the September quarter.
The southern hub will be sited at Lacovia in St Elizabeth.
Wisynco’s head of operations, N. Craig Clare, said the distribution hub at Hague, Trelawny, services Jamaica’s north coast and some parts of the west. The 25,000-square- foot facility was leased from the Factories Corporation of Jamaica and started operations in January 2022.
“We’re doing like 20 per cent more, quarter over quarter, so we’re up at between 100,000 or 80,000 cases of product per month,” Clare told the Financial Gleaner.
“That business has grown basically more than double since we started,” Mahfood said of the northern hub. Through the hubs, Wisynco is getting closer and reaching “consumers directly in those regions and so this is a strategic move for us to make sure that the southwest side of the island gets properly serviced,” he added.
The Lacovia property is about seven acres, with an option to expand, Mahfood said.
The project is in the planning stage, with full costings and regulatory approvals not yet in.
The Wisynco chairman said a lot is rising on the facility through which the company aims to go after more market share in the competitive food and beverage arena.
“We’re looking at plans for about 80,000 square feet of warehouse. It’s a material building and space. Hopefully, what we’ll be able to do is supply all of the southwestern side of the island from there with beverages and down trade distribution,” Mahfood said.
In its past financial year, ending June, Wisynco was at an all-time high $54.27 billion, which resulted in record profit of $5.16 billion.
In the first quarter ending September, despite a near-seven-per-cent increase in quarterly revenue, profit slipped slightly from $1.55 billion to $1.5 billion.
The company said lost business days resulting from the passage of Hurricane Beryl was mostly to blame for the decreased earnings.
Mahfood said the company hopes to have the new hub up and running in about one year. The company presently operates in about 800,000 square feet of space, covering factories and warehouses, whether rented or owned. Mahfood vaguely projected that between land and buildings, the southern hub project should cost about $500 million to establish.
“We’re going to submit plans and get permits and start building right away,” he said.
“We’ll have trucks there, employees, teams, everything; the whole operation will move there. What that will do is take off some stress off for the main distribution centre at Lakes Pen,” Mahfood said, referring to the company’s St Catherine-based complex.
“We’ll go straight from manufacturing to Hague and straight from manufacturing to St Elizabeth using bulk transportation,” he said.
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