HAITI has unearthed real potential for Jamaica Broilers as the local-based company expands its reach in the Caribbean market.

A year after setting up shop in the neighbouring Caribbean island, Donald Patterson, vice-president of accounting and information system at the Jamaica Broilers Group, said he expects “great things” from the earthquake-ravaged country.

Patterson was a guest on the Jamaica Observer’s weekly Monday Exchange. He was speaking about the forays the company is making in the region.

“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.

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.

“So the range of things that we do over there is actually a little more than what we do in Jamaica. In Jamaica we sell the layer birds but we don’t actually produce eggs for ourselves. So to that extent it is a little bit more in terms of the poultry operations,” he said.

At first, expansion into Haiti was a joint venture, Patterson said. However, this month marks a year since it has been operating in the island on its own. The Haitian chapter of the company is called Haitian Broilers, SA.

Its success lies in the island’s huge demand for eggs.

“In Haiti the cheapest form of protein for them is the egg. They actually consume over a million eggs per day. We in Jamaica, our consumption is no more than maybe one or two eggs per week on average,” Patterson said.

“Down there you have 10 million people and their going through a million eggs per day. So we see the egg business as one with great potential and by the end of April of 2014 we expect to be producing, perhaps, eight to 10 per cent of the daily needs in Haiti. So we are looking forward to great things,” he said, adding also that in March the group hosted Haiti’s version of the ‘Fun in the Son’ concert to which some 20,000 patrons attended. The event is a ‘mainstay’ on their calendars, added Joan Forrest-Henry, divisional sales and marketing manager of Best Dressed Chicken, who also attended yesterday’s exchange.

Jamaica Broilers, through its Best Dressed Chicken brand, has also been making steady headway in Cayman for the past 15 years. Its products have been making much headway in that country, even being featured on an advertisement commissioned by the Popeye’s restaurant there.