Seprod now benefitting from Facey Consumer acquisition

The Seprod Group—a leading manufacturer and distributor in Jamaica—is now reaping the benefits of its acquisition of Facey Consumer Division as well as an increase in export business.

This has resulted in an $11.8 billion increase in revenues to end the year with healthy earnings from continuing operations of J$34.35 billion, or 53 per cent over 2018. Net profit from continuing operations for the year was J$1.99 billion, an increase of J$510 million or 34 per cent over 2018.

The increase in profits from continuing operations was due in large part to efficiencies gained from internal reorganizations of the ingredients and the distribution businesses and from the consolidation of the dairy business. During 2019, the management of Seprod executed on its previously communicated decision to close the sugar factor.

In so doing, the management curtailed the ten years of operational losses from sugar manufacturing. This move will positively impact the Group’s return on equity and its cash flows in the future. The losses from this discontinued operation (inclusive of redundancy payments and estimated impairment losses) amounted to J$814 million. The resulting net profit for the year was $1.18 billion, an increase of J$119 million or 11 per cent over 2018.

As previously mentioned, this 2019 financial result was impacted by several one-off costs related to the Golden Grove closure and to the dairy consolidation. In its 2019 interim report posted on the Jamaica Stock Exchange website Monday (Feb 17), Seprod reports that 2019 was a year of consolidation for the Group. Company Chairman, Paul B Scott and CEO, Richard Pandohie say “the difficult decisions taken have placed the group in a very good position to generate sustainable value creation for 2020 and beyond”.