This week’s Corporate Profile takes us to the start of Paramount Trading, a company headed by Hugh Graham who is also the Member of Parliament for St Catherine North Western. His story of getting into business is one about being in the right place at the right time.

FOR Hugh Graham, CEO of Paramount Trading, going into business was not on the cards until the question was posed to him while seeking a job after he was made redundant.

“I was being interviewed for a job at Jamaica Broilers,” Graham recalled, dating the period around 1989. “They actually wanted me to open up an office in Miami, because then I used to work for May and Baker doing chemical trading and so on. At the end of the interview they asked me, why I would want to come and work for them? And that’s a question I couldn’t answer. I asked them for a week to give a response and they agreed.”

That innocuous question set off a chain of events for Graham. A young man at the time in his 20s, Graham said over the ensuing weekend he raised the issue with his friends after a game of football. At the time, he said, Jamaica Broilers was setting up its Wincorp International subsidiary in the United States. That subsidiary is now a major supplier of products supporting the poultry and agricultural industries around the world.

Graham said on the encouragement of his friends, who had just returned to the island after college abroad, he decided to take the plunge. The decision was relayed to Jamaica Broilers when he returned after a week as promised.

But setting up his own business was not going to be easy. Graham said he had no money except the funds he had received when he was made redundant.

“So one brethren, Richard Rogers — who is still a director [of Paramount Trading] — his father-in-law had a library for his law practice. Rogers asked his father-in-law if he could get the library to use for an office, and that was the start of creating what would become Paramount,” Graham explained.

Another friend, Daryl, put up his car for a loan to finance expenses for the business, and as for Graham “my part was the sweat equity”.

“We started as a manufacturer’s representative and commission agent, which is really just representing manufacturers abroad and selling for them locally and collecting our commission,” he explained.

No warehouse was need. The goods went directly from the manufacturers abroad to the local producers. Singapore-based Jebsen and Jessen was the first company he represented to local manufacturers.

“I knew of Jebsen and Jessen from the time I was working with May and Baker that eventually became Rhone-Poulenc. So when I went on my own, I approached them and told them I am going on my own, and they said they would support me, and they did,” Graham said.

No formal contracts were signed. The agreement was word-of-mouth, but for Graham, it was enough. May and Baker was a British chemical company at the time which has since undergone several transitions.

However, with an agreement in place, entities such as Red Stripe and Seprod were approached.

“In fact, Red Stripe was our first customer,” he said as he listed food chemicals he was selling to the beverage giant.

“We sell products for drinks and juice, like citric acid, sodium benzoate, sodium citrate. So very, very basic but necessary food chemicals for the industry.”

His knowledge of the chemical market was, however, gained long before he even went to May and Baker, as he had worked for AF Pattinson at his company called AF Pattinson Limited, which was engaged in a similar business representing overseas companies and selling to Jamaica on their behalf.

“Those days when I was at Pattinson, I used to drive him. I was his chauffeur primarily. So when I came here at this office or this building I would park outside, wait in the car while Pattinson would come inside and have his meetings,” Graham said, indicating that where he currently sits was not even on his radar.

“Eventually I started to come into the meetings with him. That’s when I started actually learning about chemicals and the chemical business.”

The building was owned then by Johnson Diversey or, as it is known now, Diversey Holding.

How he acquired it is left for later.

Graham said with the knowledge he gained from listening while at the meetings, he was confident he could go into the chemicals business. By this time, multinational chemical companies such as Rickett and Coleman, Henkel, and Colgate were leaving the country. Graham said May and Baker was also looking for an individual to market its chemicals to Jamaican manufacturers. “I applied, was interviewed, and got through.”

Before long, May and Baker was bought by Rhone-Poulenc, which decided to downsize in the Caribbean, making Graham redundant. That was how he ended up seeking a job at Jamaica Broilers.

But having started his own business in 1989 with the help of his friends, Graham said things started to get tough as international manufacturers left the island in the mid-90s. His clientèle was shrinking rapidly and “the commission business now started to come under pressure because you didn’t have those customers anymore”.

To survive, the business transitioned into distribution. It meant a warehouse was now needed to store chemicals and lady luck was about to smile on Graham. He said a friend, who learnt of his plight, offered a place on Waltham Park Road, St Andrew, and even helped him to make the purchase, giving him a place from which to store and sell chemicals.

“By then, we had built up some reputation and after we got our first order, I took the order to the bank and told them I had this order but have no money to finance it and they loaned me the money. When the order came, I delivered it, collected the money, repaid the bank and got my little money out of it. That is how we started to develop as distributors in the chemical industry,” Graham related.

At that time, Paramount Trading had three employees — Graham, a man who acted as security for the building, and a driver. The security and driver were just last week honoured for 25 years of service.

“We used to come in the morning, all three of us will sweep up and we had just one broom. So I do little sweeping and when I am tired another one take the broom and we sweep up and make the place look nice and clean,” Graham said with a chuckle and a glint in his eyes as he reminisced in the interview with the Business Observer.

In subsequent years, more space was needed. Again, luck would be on his side. A businessman, who had a business next door to where Graham operated, was retiring. Again, with no money, he approached the bank and after due diligence, the building was bought.

With that purchase he said the company was able to separate the food chemicals from the industrial chemicals.

Then again, another purchase and yet again with luck.

“When Diversey decided it was going to leave Jamaica, a member of staff who was working there came to me and said they think I should buy the building. But I had no money. I took it to my bank and the bank financed the deal,” he explained.

“That building is where we conducted the interview on Bell Road, in the heart of the industrial belt at Three Miles, St Andrew.

“What was great is that Diversey, even though they were leaving Jamaica, they still wanted some of their products to be made here in the facility because they had customers who still needed the products. So the money that they paid us to make the products for them, that money contributed heavily towards purchasing the property,” Graham said.

New funds were raised through an initial public offering and the company was eventually listed on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange.

Since then, Graham said the company has added “quite a bit of manufacturing… We may not have a label on it for ourselves, but we do it for others.” That includes lubricants made under the Allegheny brand and repackaging chlorine used by the National Water Commission.

“I believe the next thing that we need to do is an acquisition to bring ourselves in front of the consumer,” Graham said when asked what’s next for Paramount Trading. He said the company is having conversations and even hinted that it could come with its own brands in terms of consumer chemicals.

As for the acquisition, “we hope that will be done before the end of the current financial year.” Paramount’s financial year ends on May 31.

Additionally, he said he wants Paramount to be a net foreign exchange earner. The company is working with Jampro to enter export markets. Now it exports to Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, but on an ad hoc basis.

“We have to look at Guyana, like many other companies,” he added. “We are courting opportunities and we don’t see why there should be a reason why we should not be in that space by 2023.”