AHEAD of its planned public offer to raise $100 million from the local market to boost export activities, Tetley Tea Company changed its name to Jamaica Teas and has already diversified into renting commercial property and supermarket operations.

Head of Jamaica Tea’s John Mahfood told the Business Observer that his company had already secured a tenant for one of the three rental units it has at its commercial complex on Birdsucker Lane in Barbican, which it completed at a cost of approximately $31 million, and has taken over the Red Hills Road supermarket location formally operated as Price Rite.

“We also entered into a lease agreement for a supermarket on Chancery Street, off Red Hills Road,” Mahfood said. “We renovated the store at a cost of $10 million and opened it at the end of June.”

The supermarket, he said would cater to the communities of Meadowbrook, Duhaney Park and Red Hills.

The expansion started earlier this year with income earned from the operations of Tetley. “The funds for these investments were generated from internal cash flow and the company is essentially debt free,” Mahfood said.

Jamaica Teas had made pre-tax profits of $96 million from sales of $320 million in the last financial year ended September 30, 2009.

Additional funds of $100 million is expected to be generated through an initial public offer of 20 per cent of the ownership of the company to be used for increasing export activities, expanding the company’s warehouse facilities and for possible acquisitions, said Mahfood.

“We expect to do the listing process during the month of June. We have added three new non-executive directors, John Jackson, Mark Dabdoub, businessman and CEO of Amalgamated Distributors Ltd and Duncan Davidson, businessman and consultant,” Mahfood said of Jamaican Teas.

Mahfood said the name change was done “in recognition of our orientation to Jamaican-based products” while expansion efforts would look to overseas markets.

Before the name change, Tetley was the largest producer of tea in the English-speaking Caribbean with a market of 100 million tea bags sold annually, exporting 40 per cent of the teas produced and selling the remaining 60 per cent in Jamaica.

Formed in 1967, Tetley, which was acquired by the Mahfoods in 1995, was transformed from a producer of only black teas, to producing over 40 different types of teas, including the popular ‘herbal’ varieties including lemongrass, cerasse and ginger mint and a ready to drink chocolate drink mix called ‘old style chocolate’. Mahfood told the Business Observer in March that he was considering adding other products to the line including barbecue-flavoured sauce and coconut milk powder.