The Benlar Foods brand, under its new parent company Clarence Benjamin Group, has been repositioned to take advantage of market opportunities for value-added specialty food products in the United Kingdom.

As such, the parent company will no longer manage Benlar Foods as a subsidiary of the Clarence Benjamin Group, but as a “premium specialty brand offering healthy and convenient foods”, according to founder and CEO Craslyn Benjamin. Furthermore, the company has begun operating from a second office in the London, England, complementing the functions of its Kingston 11 operations.

The Benlar Foods portfolio includes a number of condiments and spices; canned foods such as ackee and callaloo; and value-added frozen products such as roasted breadfruit, roasted yam, sweet potato cutlets — all of which cater to a mainly vegetarian palate. Over the last three years, the company has gained exposure through trade missions and product expos in the United Kingdom, as well as grant funding from the UK Trade Partnership Programme CARIFORUM and the UK Aid.

“With support from the UK Trade Partnership Programme CARIFORUM and the UK Aid, our business has been given the opportunity to position our products to retailers and distributors within the European market. The company has also been given support from the Export Max Programme through the Jamaica Promotions Corporation (Jampro) for market expansion and penetration,” Benjamin explained.

“We are excited for these new opportunities as we position our company for transition into the export market as it is in our plans to drive export sales while continuing to service our local high-value market buyers,” she continued.

She further told Jamaica Observer that driving value-added specialty food products in the UK was key to “communicating” to the market, which is already saturated with other Caribbean food products. Just last year Benjamin participated in the International Food and Drink Festival and Specialty and Fine Foods fair in London and Benlar Foods’ products were featured at Meet the Buyer hosted by the Jamaican High Commission in London — both events she credits for “opening doors” for her in that locale.

Moreover, the CEO noted that the trade missions and grants afforded to her by the UK Government has helped her to recalibrate the company’s business model and to bring it into a “renaissance” after a trying two-year period during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I saw the opportunity to ‘renaissance’ the business through capacity building and the amount of training available that me and my close team members would have gotten from the exposure to the UK market and from being directly in the market…I could build out fully an international model that was more agile and robust, and not so capital intensive where I have build out factories to give me what I want,” she shared.

Registered in 2016, the Clarence Benjamin Group started operation in 2017 when the CEO decided to engage in agricultural co-production to supply the lower end of the agro-processing supply chain.

While Benjamin said that the aim was to contribute to building Brand Jamaica, she admits that she was unaware of the capital requirements to engage in agriculture and, by extension, agro-processing. She disclosed additionally that the potential of the brand was compromised for a period due to ill-advise of a financial expert on whom she depended on to manage the company’s cash flow and debt obligation. Benjamin was also blindsided by a request to prematurely leave a leased factory space after injecting $37 million to convert it into a “First World high-care processing facility” to meet safe quality foods standards at level three.

Notwithstanding, the Clarence Benjamin Group brought in revenues up to $60 million in 2019 from local sales to outlets such as PriceSmart and HiLo Supermarket, she said. At the same time, the company began receiving export orders due to Benjamin’s exposure to the Caribbean Export Development Agency’s ‘We Export’ programme, geared towards women in business, earlier that year.

But then came COVID, and with it lost revenues, but Benjamin used the time to restructure the agro-processing and value-added specialty food company, preparing to take advantage of opportunities presented by UKTP in 2022.

Now armed with a deeper appreciation of the UK market — understanding barriers to entry and the potential of the United Kingdom’s Economic Trade Agreement to “propel” the Benlar Foods brand forward — Benjamin is focused on increasing market penetration. She also highlighted the value of Brand Jamaica in the UK, underscoring that it is big business there.

“People love Jamaican products, they are fascinated by what we have to offer from a flavour profile standpoint, and just the fact that you are Jamaican, people love that,” she explained to Business Observer.

However, one of the critical challenges of getting products on the shelves of high street retailers such as Tesco is to secure a space in the international aisle. Otherwise, suppliers can engage in white labelling or private labelling, the process by which third-party producers make identical products that are sold by multiple retailers under different brand names.

Determined to manoeuvre these hurdles, and guided by market research conducted with UKTP, Benjamin outlined that the Benlar Foods strategy is focused mainly on a “direct to consumer model” (D2C) and a business-to-business model (B2B).

“So business is now international, with three key brands — Benlar Foods, Clarence Dutchie and Benlar Fusion — being traded under our new entity Clarence Benjamin Group. We have developed two strategic revenue models for growth: outsourced logistics by partnering with 3PLs and 4PLs for global distribution of our sauces, seasoning and spices offerings for D2C and B2B and hot food delivery through restaurant franchising. The brainchild brand Benlar focuses on specialty sauces, seasonings, spices, and premium frozen plant-based products while the Clarence Dutchie brand focuses on restaurant franchising,” the CEO outlined.

“So even if a retail chain come to us, the model is you can’t have just one supermarket, you have to be a chain looking to move high volumes of sauces, seasonings, spices, and we’re able to private label for you or you can carry our brand, if you wish,” she added.

In a bid to meet demand for Benlar Foods spices and sauces, the Clarence Benjamin Group has formed strategic alliances with key outsourced manufacturing partners, sharing its proprietary formulae and trade model with manufacturers both in the local and international market. She, however, declined naming the company’s partners.

For its plant-based and premium frozen foods items, Clarence Benjamin Group outsources to a manufacturer in the Dominican Republic, a relationship established coming out of the UKTP Programme.

By outsourcing the manufacturing of its products, Benjamin revealed, the company can now focus more on product development, ensuring quality control and food safety, as well as moving inventory. Additionally, it saves the company operation costs.

“Through strategic partnerships our new business structure is optimised, and productivity improved; therefore, allowing us the leverage to focus more on optimising our digital marketing and sustainable supply chain initiatives to drive profitable sales at the B2C and B2B levels,” she informed Business Observer.

In the meantime, a market penetration plan is now in the works for the United States a result of the company’s involvement in Jampro’s Export Max III cohort now underway.