Six months after the launch of its first sales and distribution centre in Kingston, Manpower and Maintenance Services Ltd Group (MMS) is gearing up to expand its business to Drax Hall, St Ann.

The $15-million, 1,000-square-foot retail outlet, which is slated for a February 2022 opening, will not only supply customers with medical equipment and sanitation products, but also provide facilities management.

This includes janitorial services, pest control, gardening, grounds and landscaping, construction cleaning, and plumbing and electrical services.

Touting the success of the sales and distribution centre located at 14 Collins Green Avenue in Kingston, Deputy CEO Garth Hinchcliffe told the Jamaica Observer that its other two locations in Freeport, Montego Bay, and Ward Avenue, Mandeville, will follow suit with transformations.

The renovations will cost another $15 million each, bringing the total investment in the expansion plans to between $45 and $50 million.

“[Renovations will] not stop us from selling the products as such, we’re just making it more customer friendly where you can now come in and see all of the products on display and you can do a more in depth explanation as to what you require,” Hinchcliffe told the Business Observer.

“The distribution centres gives us the opportunity to expand and to share the products that we have been using in the business over the last 30 plus years,” he continued.

Hinchcliffe said too that MMS is currently exploring opportunities in other locations, namely Savanna-la-Mar, Negril and Portland.

MMS has been on an aggressive expansion and growth strategy and is confident that the business model is ideal for its existing customers.

The group has over 300 contracts with hospitals, business process outsourcing companies and other entities.

“Because of the type of business we are in terms of sanitation, the pandemic literally gave us a tremendous amount of opportunities for sanitising so we brought in specialised equipment, specialised chemicals,

protective gear for our staff and other people to use during this time,” Hinchcliffe said.

Despite the global supply chain issues, MMS has been able to keep supplies in stock.

“We have the ability through our warehousing and logistics to store a large amount of products. So I will say we have anywhere between three to four, even five months of supplies in some instances and because we are an essential services company for the Government of Jamaica…whether at airports, hospitals, we have to keep products for emergency services,” the deputy CEO said.

Nonetheless, the company has plans to acquire a 200,000-square-foot warehousing property and is actively seeking local and regional suppliers.

“Right now, we have a major vendor out of Colombia that we’re supplying to the Jamaican public but we’re also looking to have local vendors because we try as best as we can to buy Jamaican products. We are a Jamaican company firmly rooted in Jamaica and we strongly believe in Jamaica,” he told the Business Observer.

“We want to make sure that as we grow our Jamaican company that some of our vendors who have been with us for 30 years we don’t leave them by the wayside, but we give them an opportunity to go and have other distributorships in Mandeville, Montego Bay and in Kingston,” he continued.

The group also has corporate social responsibility at the core of its operations. It comprises MMS for facilities maintenance, Institute for Workforce Education and Development Limited, Manpower and Maintenance Business Services Limited, MMS Foundation, and Manpower and Maintenance Placement Agency Limited.

According to the deputy CEO, the company through its founder and CEO Audrey Hinchcliffe, has provided coronavirus sanitisation protocols for companies and entities, as well as made donations to various hospitals across the island.

“We will continue to do that work until COVID is no longer with us. And hopefully when that part of the business disappears, we would have had a good footing in the other side of sales, supplies and equipment,” he asserted.