GraceKennedy & Company plans to invest $1 billion this year to upgrade its processes, and bring greater operational efficiency to the group, its finance director Don Wehby announced recently.

Wehby told participants at Grace's investor brief that half the investment will be on software upgrade.

The investor brief held last week Wednesday at Grace's Harbour Street, Kingston headquarters gave the company's executives an opportunity to outline the company's plans to investors and financial analysts.

"In 2005, the group will be investing heavily in information technology," Wehby declared. "We [the group] have already committed to spend over US$3 million on the implementation of a new software solution for the food trading division that will bring all the companies within the division on to a single IT platform."

Overall, the group plans to spend $499 million on IT in order to upgrade software and computers across all business segments - retail and trading, information and financial services.

Other areas of expenditure:

. $264 million on refurbishing and improving stores in the retail division,

. $123 million on factory upgrades in food trading and new machinery in retail,

. $147 million on other equipment and vehicles.
Grace spent $505 million on capital investments in 2004, due to acquisitions such as Canadian beverage company Elvico Sales Ltd, which cost the group over $100 million, and upgrades to stores and locations across the trading divisions.

The $1.03 billion that the conglomerate had budgeted for capital investments in 2005 is its highest ever for any one year. Previously, the largest amount spent in one year was $611 million - in 2003.

GraceKennedy posted net profit attributable to shareholders of $2.23 billion in 2004, representing a 12.4 per cent increase over 2003, and expects to increase it by another five to 10 per cent in 2005.

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