FOSRICH Group of Companies is looking to expand its PVC production and double its capacity within the next 24 months.

During a tour of the 6,000-square-foot production plant in St Andrew on Wednesday, the FosRich team took the Jamaica Observer through the process, from start to finish, of the manufacturing of its PVC pipes. The plant has the capacity to manufacture 16 million (kg) of raw materials per annum.

“We are at this point in time looking at only about four million [kg of raw material per annum], so our goal is to raise that by at least 60 per cent over the next 24 months. That sounds aggressive. I know that sounds aggressive, but if we get into export for four or five territories, then I expect a take-up of some of my larger PVC pipes,” said Stanford Whitely, business development manager, while speaking with the Caribbean Business Report.

“We’re currently making in excess of about 10,000 [length of 20 millimetre pieces] per day, but we can make 18,000 [length of 20 millimetre pieces per day], because as you know, the market is not that demanding, so we just run it for 10,000 per day,” added Production Manager Wayne Cephus.

He showed the process of how FosRich manufactures drain pipes of varying sizes, using a compound product imported from US and China but also from a local supplier.

“All our calcium carbonate, which is our filler, is bought from Linford Mining in St Ann. That’s 25 per cent of our mix [coming from a local source],” said Cephus.

He explained that the material makes the PVC resistant to breaking easily, allowing it to be rolled, and extends its lifespan.

“This system we have now, the pipes don’t break, well you can safely say, FosRich doesn’t make a conduit that can break, we are beyond that,” he boasted.

Cephus, in continuing the tour, explained that although the company produces conduits, there’s no local market for the product which is instead exported. The PVC pipes, however, are distributed through the hardware channels locally.

“We probably supply about 35 per cent to hardwares…Our aim is to get 50 per cent of the hardwares, which will move our capacity by about 25 per cent,” Cephus revealed.

That number is also supplied by its new plant in Clarendon which is 10 times the space of its St Andrew plant with 60,000 square feet.

“We do transformer repairs on one side [of the plant in Clarendon] and on the other side, we do pipe production,” he said in explaining the use of the space of the plant in Clarendon. Across its various plants, FosRich has 120,000 square feet of production space.

The St Andrew plant has one of the biggest lines that manufacture about 1,200, four-inch pipes per day.

“This machine [he points] is flexible, we can make nine separate pipes on this machine. From half an inch to two inches, and we can make inch and a half drain pipes, and we make conduits on this machine…so this machine makes 10 different products,” Cephus added.

Since FosRich began manufacturing PVC pipes in 2019, its profits from the product alone is 18 per cent. It just started to dabble in exporting last year with three-four shipments to Barbados. However, the business development manager is optimistic that exports will grow gradually.

“We only have one country buying from us at this time. We are in negotiation with someone from Dominica, and we are looking at how we could supply to the United States. We have not exported any large pipes because we only started manufacturing those in October last year. Market take up for a product like that is going to be 6-8 months,” Whitely told the Caribbean Business Report.

FosRich Group of Companies, through its subsidiary FosRich Limited, is known for the manufacturing and distribution of PVC pipes and fittings — for which it has a production monopoly in Jamaica — along with other electrical and plumbing products. The company offers a range of PVC pipe products, typically used for water supply, drainage systems, and other applications that require durable and reliable piping solutions.