Christine Wong, managing director of King Pepper Products Ltd, maker of condiments and seasonings in Hague, Trelawny, has announced that this summer the company is expecting to see improved results from the new Canadian distribution of its Eaton’s line of products.

The company is entering Canada for the second time, the previous arrangement having died with the closure of a small distributor.

King Pepper added the services of Universal Impex Corporation during a recent visit to Canada which was facilitated by Jampro, the Jamaican government’s export promotion agency.

Wong noted that Universal is likely to target Chinese-owned stores which carry ethnic products including a wide variety of Caribbean brands.

King Pepper currently earns 85 per cent of revenues from exports, mainly to the United States, Canada, the Cayman Islands and the United Kingdom, she said.

With one container already in the Canadian market, Wong said warm weather would be the time when the company’s jerk and barbecue sauces begin to sell well.

The company, which packages products for other large Jamaican and international companies, says these are also on shelves in Canada, providing King Pepper with hard- currency earnings.

In relation to its own Eaton’s brand, these have the representation of four distributors in the USA and one in the UK.

“Our total export figure takes into account our ‘private label’ business for other brands,” Wong explained.

King Pepper Products manufactures a range of over 20 products under its own Eaton’s brand and other private brands including jerk seasonings, BBQ sauces, tomato ketchup, hot sauces, jams, chutneys and Chinese soy sauce.

The company employs 60 workers and has more than 100 farmers supplying it with pepper (1 million lbs per annum), escallion (1 million lbs per annum), pimento, ginger, papayas and mangoes.

“We take raw materials from all parishes, but mainly St Elizabeth, Trelawny, St James, St Ann and St Mary,” Wong explained.

King Pepper Products Ltd was founded in 1985 by Dudley Eaton on Carib Road in Martha Brae, Trelawny.

The company began with only one product, a pepper sauce made from peppers purchased from a nearby farmer.

With a focus on quality, Eaton was approached to do other products under a co-packing arrangement with several large distributors, and so he began doing mango chutney and the jerk seasoning which today is the company’s flagship product.

In 1992, King Pepper moved to its present location in Hague Industrial Estate, near Falmouth. The property was eventually purchased from the Factories Corporation.

The company has modernised over time, with one of its financing partners being EXIM bank. Staff are continuously trained, and products are tested to ensure that manufacturing specifications are met, Wong indicates.

The company head declined to put a value on annual company revenues, but indicated that King Pepper is a rapidly growing company and is always seeking to penetrate new markets

The company, which was joined by six other Jamaican manufacturers on the Jampro trade mission to Canada, was able to secure the distributor for its Eaton’s line of products, and received its first container order to Canada late last year.

— Avia Collinder