With a number of projects lined up this year, commercial furniture manufacturer JFP, formerly Jamaica Fibreglass Products Limited, said it is looking to secure an even better financial performance this year as it retools and looks to enter more markets.

Near doubling earnings last year, the contract manufacturer, which services large clients in the global retail and hospitality industries during its first year of operations as a listed company, realised $15 million in profit — 80 per cent above the prior year. This was also supported by strong revenue flows which grew twofold to total $476.3 million for the year.

Pleased but not satisfied with the 2022 out-turns, the company’s CEO Metry Seaga said that despite the increases, which were also below projections, moving ahead the plan is to go after more growth, with eyes on a number of new markets.

“We set very high standards for ourselves and we do recognise that our shareholders want to see great things from us. While we saw increases in sales and profits in 2022 which sort of puts us in the right direction, they were not as robust as we would have hoped and that was mainly because a couple of jobs that we were working on were not materialised in time. Irrespective of this, we have some very good growth prospects and we are retooling equipment to meet those demands,” he said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer.

“For this financial year and beyond, we are focused on new markets as these are very important for us. We are looking at the Dominican Republic, Panama, Bahamas as we also position to have a larger footprint in the US. We are already in the US market, but not in a big enough way…we want to tap the east coast in a real way but we’re not there yet. The last job we did there was on the west coast in California, so what we want to do now is make a concerted effort to get unto the east coast,” he added.

“We’re constantly looking at new markets as we try to build our customer base. Currently we have a good pipeline of work underway and we are throwing out as many quotes as we can, as we try to build our export orders throughout the Caribbean while managing those locally that we have through the hotels. We are in dialogue with about three local hotels right now as they undergo various stages of construction activities,” he told the Business Observer.

A junior market company, which listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange in March 2022, JFP has for near four decades created commercial furnishings for a number of spaces including offices, restaurants, and hotels among other special projects for thousands of clients across the Western Hemisphere. Following its latest partnership with Office Supplies, JFP sees the commercial agreement with the Trinidadian company as a strategic opportunity to grow its business while providing a platform for quicker access to its products in the region and outwards.

“The strategic commercial agreement will also facilitate diversification of the companies’ activities by creating a distribution chain for JFP and a manufacturing arm for Total Office, adding to the capabilities currently in each company’s repertoire, and leading to new income streams for them both,” a news release posted last month stated.

Seaga said that with the business having managed to remain debt free throughout the years, it has maintained a good build-up of capital, making it nimble and able to readily go after growth prospects while sustaining minimal blows from global shocks such as high interest rates, which in recent times has adversely affected a number of companies.

“Up to now, we remain a debt free company so that has helped us to weather a number of the challenges. To note though…we have, however, just taken on some debt to buy new equipment, but this I believe will help to make us more profitable so we look forward to reaping the benefits of how that will assist us with our productivity,” he said.