CHAIRMAN and CEO of GraceKennedy (GK) Limited, Douglas Orane has called on businesses to take advantage of the optimistic business environment that prevails ‘post-JDX’ and look at non-traditional produce among the possibilities for development.

“With this increase in confidence, certain business undertakings which have potential comparative and competitive advantages but had been put on hold, can now be reconsidered for development,” said Orane. Included in this focus are industries such as agroprocessing, seafood and shellfish, mining, entertainment, the call centre industry and the small and medium enterprises in fast foods, housekeeping services, beauty care and accounting.

Orane, who was a guest speaker at the Financial Services Commission’s (FSC’s) financial forum, ‘The Jamaica Debt Exchange: The Way Forward’, held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, noted that the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) created an environment of business confidence that augurs well for new business development.

The Jamaica Chamber of Commerce’s Conference Board reported this month that the index of Business Confidence increased 15 points over the first quarter of 2010 — the period in which the JDX was effected — to 114.0 points in the second quarter of 2010. The JDX saw the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) replace its high interest-bearing bonds with instruments of lower yields and longer maturities in February.

Orane encouraged local entrepreneurs, new and existing farmers and business persons to consider agroprocessing as “the strategic development of the agricultural sector can lead to enhanced productivity and more competitive pricing”.

Having identified the demand for ‘non-traditional’ produce such as broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, red cabbage and cilantro, Orane said GK Foods will be developing a processing facility in Hounslow, St Elizabeth, to help supply high growth end-users such as the tourism sector with the produce.

“A significant portion of these fruits and vegetables are imported for use in the hospitality industry, and as such there is an opportunity to produce some of these crops locally for hotels and restaurants, and for distribution through the retail trade,” said Orane.

With the construction of the facility being the second of two such ventures in the area, local farmers will be engaged in supplying produce to the facility, thereby increasing the opportunities for employment in the area, among other things. The venture currently contracts 60 farmers, who themselves employ hundreds of other workers on their farms.

“GK Foods also plans to purchase some of the produce for the processing facility from the greenhouse farmers in adjacent communities. By doing so we will be providing a secure market for contracted farmers, at the same time providing the hotel sector with a reliable source of fresh produce and vegetables, reduce imports while providing fruits and vegetables for local consumption,” said Orane.

Orane told Sunday Finance that the venture will raise the level of local competitiveness as the requirements of the farmers and of the company are at the world standards of production and technology use.

“We have certain prerequisites that a farmer has to meet in order to be eligible. The first one is that they must have irrigation. Because if they don’t have irrigation they can’t be reliable throughout the year. The second is that they need to have the necessary maturity that they will honour a contract so that if they sign you know that they will deliver according to the fixed price that we have agreed with them,” said Orane.

“The world we are in now, we have clients who say, I don’t care what’s happening in Jamaica. I don’t care if you have a drought or a hurricane. You just make sure you supply us everyday and if you don’t have it we are going to take you off the shelf and put somebody else,” said Orane, who noted that one of his major clients is the US supermarket chain Tesco.

“There is no choice we have to be disciplined. All our Jamaica people need to recognise that in the world we are in, the world does not run on excuses.”

The choice of setting up the facility in St Elizabeth was also a strategic one for GK Foods, according to Orane. He said that not only is the parish “one of the most productive parts of Jamaica”, but the skills that the workers from the fledgling bauxite industry possess are transferable to agribusiness.

“It is very transferable because many, if not most, of the people in bauxite came from a farming background, and they never gave up their land. In fact, they would have continued to farm on a secondary basis while they were working in the bauxite and alumina industries. So when Alpart closed down, for example, it was very easy to expand on what they had from before,” said Orane.

“In any event, in St Elizabeth you have a culture of being very hard-working so what it does is it creates another outlet for them to be able to expand and also to use new technology like greenhouse farming and hydrofarming,” he said.