Jamaica Broilers are expanding their reach in Caribbean market with their successful operations of their Haitian Broilers, SA. company in Haiti.
After starting business in Haiti two years ago, Donald Patterson, vice-president of accounting and information system at the Jamaica Broilers Group, said he expects "great things" from the country ravaged by an earthquake in 2010.
Haiti is a market of 10 million people, and if the growth of Jamaica Broilers business there continues, it will become a larger and more important market than the company's home market of Jamaica.
Jamaica Broilers, entered Haiti in 2010. Patterson explained "Back in 2010 we started out on a joint venture arrangement with Haiti where we would simply send down feed from Jamaica and we would send down chicks from the US," said Patterson, describing the venture, initially done through the company's main distributors, as a fact-finding mission.
"Back in 2010 we started out on a joint venture arrangement with Haiti where we would simply send down feed from Jamaica and we would send down chicks from the US," said Mr Patterson, describing the venture, initially done through the company's main distributors, as a fact-finding mission.
In under a year, he said, the mission proved fruitful, outweighing the company's operation in Jamaica where it started in the 1950s.
"We actually set up processing facilities where we now have a hatchery where we produce the baby chicks in Haiti; we have a feed mill, where we produce feed for layer birds and for broiler ration. We also have a farm where we grow out layer pullets", said Patterson. "We sell some of those to the external customers, we transfer some of them to an external farm, and we also grow out some broiler birds which then go to the factory where we have now built a small processing plant. We also sell chilled or frozen birds in Haiti.
Their feed mill in Jamaica, the Best Dressed Chicken Feed Mill is the largest feed mill in the Caribbean. With a capacity of over 260,000 metric tonnes of pelleted feeds produced each year, the feed mill also produces over 50 types of animal feeds including crumbled and mashed feed.
The company is also making steady headway in the Cayman Islands, where in the past 15 years their products have been growing steadily.
