BEVERLEY Lopez, past president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), now heads Label Crafts Jamaica Ltd, a newly formed label packaging printery infused with US$1 million ($115 m) and 10 staff members.

“My mandate is to grow the business as much as I can, to appeal to small and medium-sized exporters,” stated country manager Lopez at the Half-Way-Tree head office in Kingston on Wednesday.

The Observer reported last week that Barbadian- based Goddard Enterprises Group invested a then undisclosed sum to set up the new printery in the island by December 2014. Lopez indicated that Goddard wanted to set up a printery to serve smaller manufacturers in conjunction with its large clients.

“They realised that the scene was changing in Jamaica. We have a lot of new small manufacturers and we found that they could not import labels,” she said. “The whole drama of importing is a pain to a small company. So we recognised a need for a nimble high-quality label company in Jamaica.”

The local printery currently operates one eight-hour shift which allows it to cover costs, but the business “will make money” on two shifts.

“And when we go on three [shifts] we are riding high. We might seem overstaffed now but we are looking to go to a second shift really quickly,” she said.

The company operates a series of machines led by its digital web indigo press by HP.

“The investment here is a tad under US$1 million. We have employed 10 persons, mainly technical persons, because the press is very technical,” she explained. “Six in the plant, two sales people, an accountant, one key person that liaises with the customers to get the artwork ready, and myself. So it’s a very lean staff,” she said.

Lopez avoided photos throughout, indicating that “it’s about the staff, not me”. She served as president of The PSOJ from February 2003 to December 2006. Lopez recalled her transition from part-owner of a fledgling brewery to head up the local printing arm of a Barbadian-owned company.

“About 15 months ago I was at a loose end. I was involved in Big City Brewing, which didn’t do very well… Catherine’s Peak [a brand of water co-founded by Lopez] was all right — my nephew was running that. So I saw an advertisement from Caribbean Label Craft, that they wanted a country manager, and I applied,” she said about the brewery sold to businessman Roy D’Cambre in 2012.

Caribbean Label Craft Ltd in Barbados held contracts with large Jamaican beverage and food manufacturers for over two decades, but those labels were printed overseas and imported into the island. Large company labels will continue to be imported.

“It doesn’t make sense that we do big printing jobs here because we are not going to be competitive. We want to compete with smaller amounts between one to 100,000 labels,” she said.

Caribbean Label Crafts’ design studio and printing plant is located in Barbados with a smaller plant in Jamaica, and marketing, sales and customer support teams in the French West Indies, Puerto Rico, Central America, Mexico and Venezuela. The company serves clients in 32 countries in the Caribbean and the Americas.

“The size of the market here is huge because people buy labels here from Barbados, from Trinidad–we have several suppliers from Trinidad supplying here. And one of the key places people buy labels from is China,” she said.

The local operations will eventually look at exporting labels to Haiti and the Dominican Republic “as we grow”.

Caribbean Label Crafts, established in 1986 in Barbados, specialises in quality multi-process labels and tags. The company initially specialised in printing labels for rum and spirits but eventually expanded to beverages, food and other products.

Goddard operates a number of local-based entities including Goddard Catering Group (Jamaica) Limited, Fidelity Motors Limited, Jamaica Dispatch Services Ltd, and National Rums of Jamaica Ltd.

The group, which operates in several Caribbean countries, earned BB$48.9 million from revenues of BB$954.1 million or 44 per cent more net income year- on-year.