CARIBBEAN Cream Limited, producer of Kremi ice cream, has ended its 2015/16 financial year on a high, posting profit of $163 million or 188 per cent more than the numbers posted a year earlier.

It’s the highest profit that Caribbean Cream has made in its nine-year history, according to chairman of the company, Carol Clarke Webster, and was led by aggressive marketing strategies as well as continued decrease in the price of oil, sugar and fats on the world market.

Operation efficiencies also contributed to the jump in net profit of $109.9 million year over year.

“In addition, the company’s new refrigeration system brought down the kilowatt hours needed to produce and store our products,” Clarke Webster told shareholders in the company’s 2016 annual report.

Caribbean Cream made $163.7 million net profit on $1.13 billion in revenues for the financial year. It’s substantially more than the $56.7 million net profit posted in the 2014/15 financial year, but the profit also improves on the $35 million net profit in financial year 2013/14.

Clarke Webster noted that during the year, the company continued the expansion of its distribution system, with the introduction of new wholesale and retail outlets islandwide. She added that Caribbean Cream has also launched new packaging formats and took new ice-cream flavours to the market. The ice-cream maker currently markets approximately 20 flavours.

“Work progressed on the construction of our new factory to bring it to modern industry standards. This should be completed in the next financial year, resulting in the expansion of the production space by 50 per cent,” Clarke Webster continued.

“We installed a new hot water system, as well as a racking system in the cold room, while the ice cream processing system improved through new equipment and the use of technology,” she said.

The system changes resulted in a 20 per cent increase in capacity of the plant and higher efficiencies. The company added that a new point of sale machine has improved monitoring of its inventory and revenues from its three depots.

Caribbean Cream closed the financial year with cash flow and equivalents totalling $152.5 million, $150 million more than the $2.5 million a year earlier. Working capital also increased to $178 million resulting from improved sales, reduction in cost of operating revenue, and close monitoring of the accounts receivable and inventory portfolios.