NIGEL Benjamin, CEO of RansBriya Greenhouse Producers Limited, is about to embark on a $200-million expansion of his Douglas Castle, Clarendon, farm as he seeks to make his operation more efficient to meet demand for his products, the latest in his journey into a career he said he developed a passion for when he was a child.

“I grew up in a farming community in northern Clarendon, a community known as Douglas Castle, close to Kellits. I grew up watching my father who was a farmer and from then I had a passion for farming,” Benjamin told the Jamaica Observer in an interview Tuesday.

He said while growing up he would help his father around the farm and was even given his own half-acre plot to grow his own vegetables which he tended to before he went to school each day and after he returned home. His father, who has since retired from farming due to advancing years and has since opened a farm store in Kellits, supplied hotels and other places with produce and made a good life from it, though, according to Benjamin, he had no tertiary-level education.

“After leaving high school, I didn’t further my education, I went straight into farming where I started to farm for myself and supply restaurants and hotels in Montego Bay,” he said, acknowledging that he followed his father’s footsteps.

Benjamin said that was about 1995, when he left Kellits Secondary School, which is now Kellits Junior High, and joined his father.

“After farming on my father’s land, I started to expand the farm. My father, when he couldn’t manage the hardwork anymore, turned to open a farm store. Whenever farmers had issues with their farm, they would go to his farm store to get advice on what to do.”

He said after his father gave up farming, he and his two brothers branched out on their father’s 57-acre property where they continued his open field farming, but Benjamin said he wanted “to take it a bit further” and so he started to do greenhouse farming, starting small and then building up over the ensuing years.

“It was a major challenge at the time because not a lot of people were into greenhouses in Jamaica. The information was limited at the time and I had a lot of things by trial and error because back then we couldn’t go on Google to get information or turn to other greenhouse farmers in the country for guidance.”

“I started using lumber and that is high-maintenance for greenhouses compared to metal, and that was posing a lot of challenges on my side,” he said.

But, he added: “The greenhouses gave me an advantage in the market then because not many people were into greenhouses. So like in the rainy season when outdoors got damaged by the extra rain I was safe, so I was able to fill my demand and fill where other suppliers fell short, so I was considered the more reliable supplier which gave me a big edge in the market.”

Benjamin told the Business Observer that before venturing off on his own, he would accompany his father to deliver goods all over the island, and there he learnt not just delivery, but also networking for the future, which would come in handy for his own push into running his own company.

In those days, one of his first customers was a company called Versair In-Flite Services, which was a joint venture company between Barbados-based Goddard Enterprises Limited and Jamaican conglomerate GraceKennedy Limited, before the latter’s stake was purchased by its partner and the company renamed.

He said then he was growing and processing lettuce for the company who sold it to airlines using both the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston and the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, including the now-defunct Air Jamaica.

“That was when they served sandwiches on planes, now they just serve snacks and juice,” he reflected. But that business was to face challenges when Air Jamaica was divested to Caribbean Airlines in 2008, and with it changes to the menu for passengers followed shortly after.

“It didn’t make sense anymore to process lettuce for them based on the quantities they were ordering. I still had the equipment. I had it in a 40 foot container and so I turned to supply McDonald’s and then from there, supplied KFC after McDonald’s closed in Jamaica.”

Then, US fast food chain McDonald’s operated in Jamaica. Benjamin said he supplied the company with lettuce, tomatoes and “all the vegetables they used” and was their sole supplier on the north coast. McDonald’s had another supplier for Kingston. It shuttered its doors in October 2005 after struggling for 10 years to replicate the success of its rivals in the market.

When McDonald’s closed, Benjamin said he approached KFC through a former manager at McDonald’s who had successfully transitioned to working with the fried chicken giants. He said his focus was set on processing coleslaw for KFC, but then the company was doing the work itself out of its commissary at its head office in Kingston, from which it supplied the product islandwide. He was encouraged to approach them and did, offering to not only supply the company with products for coleslaw, but to also process it himself at his processing plant on the farm in Clarendon.

“I explained to KFC that I had my greenhouses and invested a lot in processing to ensure the quality and consistency of the supply of my products.”

But he said he was told that KFC was about to outsource the processing of coleslaw to another supplier and he pointed out that his processing facilities should also be considered, especially given that he was supplying his own produce from his own farm while the other supplier did not own a farm and had to source the produce.

He said the managers at KFC visited his farm and were satisfied that his facility was up to standard and decided to share the contract with him. He said he was also asked to fill shortages when other suppliers could not.

Having secured the contract with KFC, Benjamin began to grow further. Now he is the sole supplier of vegetables to various fast food restaurants such as Wendy’s, Pizza Hut and of course, KFC. He said he also supplies “a few Burger King locations islandwide” with vegetables for their burgers, and Popeye’s restaurants.

He said he has had challenges, including with the recent passage of Hurricane Beryl, but he continues to meet his contractual obligations to the restaurants he supplies even though it means he has to purchase produce at higher prices and sell them back at lower prices based on his contract.

He now grows his vegetables in 45 greenhouses over five acres of land. The size of his farm is, however, 50 acres and he still practises open field agriculture, growing cabbages and other vegetables to fill his weekly contracts that include supplying 20,000 pounds of cabbage, 12,000 pounds of lettuce and 15,000 pounds of tomatoes. Other items supplied include sweet pepper and carrots done by a workforce of 40 to 60 employees, from farmers to processors and truck drivers delivering his produce islandwide.

“When I just started it was one truck which I drove and delivered on my own, but as the business expanded over the years, I had to get drivers and other people to work.”

Going forward, he said the plan is to become more efficient and, as such, he is looking to expand the processing facility to make it a more modern facility.

“The demand is growing and we have more stores opening up for KFC, and so the business is expanding. The processing facility that we have now, we have outgrown,” he pointed out.

He said he recently visited the Netherlands to explore how to expand and will put it in action early next year.

Now, outside of his farming, Benjamin has been expanding into other areas. He recently built a plaza in Kellits and operates a Juici Patties franchise there while the other shops are rented. He is also into constrution and is currently doing a residential development in Kingston, about which he said more will be revealed later.