Fast-growing Jamaican confectionery company Sweetie is diversifying its product line to include peanut brittle later this month after inking a manufacturing deal with another local industry player – Edwards Manufacturing.

Sweetie’s product line expansion will be facilitated by the 14-month-old Jamaican microenterprise already manufacturing peanut brittle for the local market.

Under the Sweetie brand, Edwards Manufacturing will contract package the new products for distribution across Sweetie’s existing 150 retail locations. Samples of the product have already been exported to existing UK distributor of Sweetie Confectionary, Ashanti Importers.

Though not a “sweetie” by the classic definition, peanut brittle has long been enjoyed as a traditional Jamaican sweet treat. “I don’t want to pigeonhole the company into only hard candies,” CEO of Sweetie Confectionery, Patria-Kaye Aarons said. “My intention is to satisfy the sweet tooth of Jamaicans and Jamaicans at heart and that’s a wide open space.”

“I am running a successful manufacturing company without owning a single machine,” Aarons stated in a release. “The company being a little over one year old has been able to manufacture candy for local, regional and international markets due to its collaboration with other local confectionery manufacturers.”

“SMEs aren’t usually involved in manufacturing because the entry and production costs are so high. Many aren’t able to justify investments in machinery because local demand just isn’t enough to maximise their productivity. However, I found a way into manufacturing as a small business by partnering with other manufacturing SMEs,” Aarons continued.

So far, the collaboration between two seeming competitors has proved beneficial to both companies, according to Aarons.

The duo is confident that the model will work since the target markets are different. While Aarons targets supermarkets, hotel gift shops, gas stations, pharmacies and people in the diaspora, Edwards Manufacturing primarily supplies wholesale outlets.

“This arrangement works well for us. We have a small operation managed by my wife and we just know how to make a really good peanut brittle”, part-owner of Edwards Manufacturing, Dwight Edwards stated. Edwards plans on hiring three additional staff members in order to handle the projected Sweetie Peanut Brittle volumes.

Aarons noted that competitors in the business sector usually operate with a “cut-throat” mentality but adds that she is a firm believer that small businesses should support each other and that there is space for all operators to be profitable.

It’s the second time that Aarons has partnered with another manufacturer in getting her business model off the ground. Aarons’ fruit-flavoured hard candies and Paradise Plums are currently manufactured by Miel, the country’s only existing commercial confectionery space in operation since 1988.

Over the past year of operation, Sweetie has launched three products, which is available in 130 locations across Jamaica and is exported to the United States, United Kingdom and the US Virgin Islands. It is banking on landing additional export markets in the coming months.

— Karena Bennett