Manufacturer of industrial and domestic plastic products Omni Industries is going after new business in the untapped bread tray and motor oil buckets industry.

The two segments are both areas of the thermoplastics market currently dominated by imports from Canada and the United States, but Omni wants to divert some of those sales to its own top line and has set in motion a plan to expand its production process to meet its new goal.

Omni is looking to increase its production capacity by roughly 25 per cent to facilitate the expansion plans, which, in addition to moving into bread tray and motor oils bucket, will see the thermoplastics manufacturer rolling out new stock keeping units in the crates it currently produces for beverage companies such as Red Stripe and Cremo.

Currently the beverage market utilises three crate sizes, with the standard crate holding 24 bottles. But there is increased demand for smaller crates from Red Stripe and the producers of diary products, Managing Director Patrick Kumst said.

“Instead of holding 12 one-gallon bottles for juice and milk, the diary people want a packaging for size products, for example. We have found that with the changes in the economy that people want smaller packaging, it’s more affordable, so we must meet those demands by coming up with new products,” he told the Business Observer during a tour of the property last Friday.

For now, Omni’s priority products are the bread trays and motor oil which Kumst hopes to have on the market by end-2024. The company has already signed NCB Capital Markets as arranger for the financing of the capital expansion project at its Twickenham Park-based facility in Spanish Town, St Catherine, but size of its investment was not disclosed.

“Those are the more logical ones to go after over the short term because being a local manufacturer it means we have a lot of advantages in terms of costing. Products such as buckets and crates take up a lot of volume, they don’t stack well in a container, and so the freight content is very high.

“We can supply the customers’ needs as they have it, in smaller quantities so they don’t have to tie up inventory, and we can also offer customisation when it comes to colouring, labelling, things of that nature,” Kumst explained.

The import value of bread trays in Jamaica is still being tabulated, but Kumst reckons that Omni’s deepened foothold in the food industry through the new product line, in addition to new buckets and increased crate skus, is enough to add roughly 5 per cent on the company’s revenue which currently stands at some $2 billion annualised.

“It doesn’t sound too significant in the broader schemes of things but one of the attractive things with that is the economies of scale. The more product we get through the factory, the better our cost consumption would be per pound of raw material,” he said.

Throughout its 49 years of existence, Omni Industries has made significant inroads in the thermoplastics markets. The business, which started out in the production of garden hoses, diversified into the manufacturing of PVC pipes which includes electrical conduits, drainpipes, water pressure pipes; before evolving into bottle crates, industrial buckets and plastic housewares when it acquired Thermoplastics Jamaica Limited, once the largest plastics manufacturer in the Caribbean, in 2001.

Today, Omni has built up a network of clients across Jamaica’s top-producing industries, including the hotel, agro-processing, food, beverage and construction.

Its new expansion thrust will likely allow the company to capture new business from heavy players in the baking industry, including National Baking Co, Honey Bun, Consolidated Bakeries and Excelsior.

“The bread companies all use a particular product that holds the bread in place for transportation. That product is not made in Jamaica and everybody relies on importation, so we see that as a market niche that we can get into,” Kumst said.

Omni is procuring equipment from Taiwan to make what’s known as the standard size bread trays in Jamaica, spanning 3.5 feet by 2 feet.

“There is also a smaller one that we will be producing that is roughly 12 inches less. It’s the same sort of rectangular shape as well,”he said.

The motor oil industry is also a new market segment for Omni. The company has also been brainstorming innovative ways to respond to packaging demands for the importation of bulk motor oil which are then repackaged and sold on the retail market.

Kumst is eyeing closed-lid five gallon or 20 litre buckets with a spout to serve that market.

“The bucket is similar to the ones we do now for companies like Rainforest, but the material requirements are going to be different because some plastics react with oil and chemical products,” he said.

Omni currently has on staff 110 people that work three shifts, but it’s looking to add 15 employees by the close of 2024 to support its expansion plans.