Nations Choice has invested about $1 billion in new cold storage capacity as the Jamaican food company positions itself for increased demand from the hotel sector while preparing to export locally manufactured products across the Caribbean.

Guyana is expected to be the first export market early next year, Chief Executive Officer Donald McDonald said, with Barbados, St Lucia and the Cayman Islands also among the countries being targeted.

The Clarendon-based company imports and distributes frozen and chilled seafood, meats, poultry and vegetables, but has been steadily increasing manufacturing as it builds the Nations Choice name into a consumer brand.

“We are preparing ourselves now to start exporting from Jamaica some of the products that we manufacture,” McDonald told the Jamaica Observer in an interview on Wednesday. “We have gone into some markets, done some market surveys, and there is a lot of interest in some of the products that we do manufacture.”

The planned exports would include burgers, bacon, ham and pickled products made in Jamaica. Nations Choice already moves some branded products into other Caribbean countries but McDonald said those goods are produced or packaged outside Jamaica. That activity accounts for only about one to two per cent of the company’s business.

Nations Choice CEO Donald McDonald shows the Jamaica Observer the company’s new cold-storage facility in Clarendon, part of a roughly $1-billion investment aimed at expanding capacity for the hospitality sector.

Nations Choice has invested an estimated $4 billion since starting in 2011 with two containers and five products, McDonald said. The company now employs more than 300 people and handles about 200 stock-keeping units.

The larger cold storage facility represents an investment of about $1 billion and can hold about four million kilogrammes of product. A separate picking room, which is not included in that investment, has capacity for about 1,500 pallets. The operation runs around the clock.

McDonald said the investment was made with Jamaica’s expanding hotel pipeline in mind. Hospitality already accounts for about 20 per cent of Nations Choice’s business, with the remaining 80 per cent coming from the wider local market, including institutions and consumers.

He expects between 8,000 and 9,000 hotel rooms to come on stream over the next two years, which he believes will create additional demand for food suppliers.

Government filings reported in July identified 13 hotel projects facilitated by Jamaica Promotions Corporation (Jampro), that are expected to add 8,943 rooms, although the developments have varying completion timelines and some have been delayed.

“I think that presents a great opportunity for growth in servicing that sector,” McDonald said. “That is why we’re interested in building this new cold storage, positioning ourselves to be able to service the hospitality sector.”

Workers package burgers at Nations Choice’s Clarendon operation, where the company produces about 29,000 burger patties each week.

The bet on hotels comes while that part of Nations Choice’s business is still recovering from Hurricane Melissa. McDonald estimated that the company’s hospitality business was down about 30 per cent in November and December as a number of properties closed, particularly in western Jamaica.

The impact was partly offset in the months that followed as hotels that remained open operated at high occupancy because fewer rooms were available. Nations Choice also supplied protein and frozen vegetables to Central Kitchen during its hot meal operations following the hurricane.

McDonald said the company has not yet fully re-established its hotel business because some properties remain closed while others are only now reopening.

Nations Choice is also putting more weight behind products it makes itself. Manufacturing began in 2017 with pig tail and mackerel and has since expanded to burgers, ham, bacon and other processed foods.

McDonald said the company now produces about 29,000 burger patties each week, while locally manufactured products account for roughly 15 per cent of what it distributes.

A sample of Nations Choice chicken bacon, a new locally manufactured product the company plans to introduce in early September.

Over the past three years Nations Choice has also increased the number of products sold under its own brand in supermarkets, moving beyond its traditional business-to-business model supplying hotels, restaurants, wholesalers and institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons.

Its locally manufactured range includes curried goat and jerk pork burgers, with chicken bacon due to be added in early September.

“We are launching a chicken bacon,” McDonald said.

Those locally made products are also being lined up for the regional push. Nations Choice already supplies Guyana with goods sourced from other jurisdictions, McDonald said, but is now preparing to supply the market with products manufactured in Jamaica.

“I would say we have broken in already because we are already moving products there from other jurisdictions,” he said. “It is just a matter of moving products now from Jamaica there, which is what we are preparing ourselves to start doing.”

Donald McDonald, chief executive officer of Nations Choice, says the company is preparing to export Jamaican-made products into regional markets while expanding its manufacturing operations.