The corporate portfolio of Caribbean conglomerate CB Group reads as a veritable master-class in creating, expanding and sustaining a heritage-rich business. Endeavour Magazine finds out how baking bread in the 1950s evolved into big business.

WRITTEN BY KATIE RICHARDSON

SOWING THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS

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Efficiency is certainly the backbone of this business. What started as a family-run operation in a rural town in the parish of St. Elizabeth in pre-independent Jamaica,

evolved into the largest and most diverse bakery complex in the region, delivering breads, buns, and biscuits island-wide, added a poultry processing operation and expanded still further into a dynamic and diversified agri-business with an international reach. Its ubiquitous name has embedded itself firmly in Jamaican culture; it’s a safe bet to make that when a family sits down to dinner, the CB Group will have had one hand or another in bringing the food to the table.

The 1980s saw the most momentum: having become the undisputed market leader in the sector, the baking family ventured further into the food industry, with subsidiaries comprising an animal protein production complex and the production of poultry, eggs and pork directly through integrated operations and indirectly with additional animal protein, animal feed manufacturing and a distribution network. This bold step into agriculture planted the seeds for what today forms the CB Group – home of CB Chicken, Smart Eggs, Chippenham Eggs, Copperwood Pork, Caribbean Passion (producing processed meat products), Bad Dawg Sausages and Nutramix Feeds, which aims to feed just about all the commercial livestock in Jamaica.

Investments in the tourism industry have also made the conglomerate the third largest hotel operators in the region, with a footprint that spans Negril, Montego Bay, Kingston and St. Lucia, and a combined room count of 2,300. The hotels are a significant player

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“I never knew anything about business, I only knew how to bake,” company patriarch Karl Hendrickson confessed to the Jamaica Observer in 2012. “I always ask how efficient can we be at this thing? If it’s a technical process and we can do it better, we take a look at it.”

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in island industry, being one of the major buyers of local services and products, and help to stimulate the economy significantly.

The CB Group’s empire is now managed by Karl’s daughter Lori-Ann and a team of senior managers that include her husband Dave Lyn as director and her son Matthew as chief operations officer, keeping business very much in the family, but still providing jobs for nearly 4,000 Jamaicans.

Grassroots excellenceGood food starts with quality farming, and the CB Group has

made this possible through a dedicated network of trusted farmers and commercial customers. “We produce 25-30 types of animal feed for farmers in Jamaica and nine other countries across the Caribbean,” declares manager of corporate affairs, Dr. Donald Keith Amiel. “It is an integrated broiler operation that produces about 30 million kilograms of chicken meat per year from a hatchery that turns out around 600,000 baby chicks a week. In addition to the broiler operation, we are on our way to becoming the biggest pork producer in the country with a complete food chain operation, from a research facility right through to processing. We also have a commercial egg operation that produces regular eggs and Omega 3 enriched eggs,

Morris Hatchery has been operating as a family owned business since 1962. We started our broiler hatching egg operation and the CB Group joined us as one of our largest and major customer and has been part of our family. We are very proud and humbled to say that we have contributed to CB Group’s growth and success.

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which are for the hotel and supermarket trade.”A qualified veterinarian, Amiel is well-placed to advise the CB

Group’s network of livestock farmers. “We have been able to build an agriculture industry based on training small farmers across the country,” he asserts. “We deliver about 20 workshops a month where farmers learn how to use our feed and produce livestock.” These free training sessions have contributed significantly to Caribbean agriculture, and the continuous training has created strong sector management.

The CB Group also works closely with the country’s Dairy Development Board to strengthen the industry and produce as much milk as possible from the four breeds of cattle currently found in Jamaica. It remains vitally important for the company to achieve and sustain organic growth: “We are working on redeveloping the cattle industry because in the past, the colonies have suffered from gifts of kindness and Haiti is an excellent example of this,” explains Amiel. “Europe and North America gave us surplus milk powder and butter, which could have destroyed the local dairy industry. So now there is no surplus; we have to rebuild again without international aid.”

The company also has a geographical ace up its sleeve: Jamaica’s position on the continent lends to huge potential when it comes to

growing grain. “Until now, Jamaica has been sustained by countries that have growing seasons of just seven months because of the cold weather and snow,” says Amiel. “But by virtue of Jamaica’s idyllic climate, we can produce things 365 days a year. So the company is now growing grain in an effort to compensate price fluctuations in the market. For example, we have an advantage over North America as they only have one crop per year, whereas we can have two. We want to use our resources and broaden out what we do, therefore becoming less dependent on international markets for raw materials.”

Successful assertionSmooth operations and continued efficiency remains the

cornerstone of production for the Group as business continues to gather impetus. New technological advancements and systematic processes have been passed onto the company’s integrated farmers, which has consequently benefitted the CB Group and impacted positively on the local economy and community.

“We give them feed and baby chicks to produce themselves,” says Amiel. “We have as many as 18 university graduates, including four veterinarians, out in the field providing a service to make sure farmers get it right. So far, it appears to be working, as it has put around 30,000 people across the region into work. It is a major employer of labour, generating as much if not more income than the banana and sugar industries that sustained the colonies in days gone by.”

The company has also achieved important milestones in its assurances of high quality produce to its customers, highlighting its pledge that the business ‘believes in its own products.’ “We have put in quality control measures, our facilities are certified against good manufacturing practices and we have various programmes in place,” asserts Amiel. “We are proud to be certified by the leading auditors in the world, SGS, and the only company of its kind in the region to boast ISO 9001:2008 (Quality Management Systems), HACCP and GMP (Food Safety) accreditations.”

The team at the CB Group understand that food safety, excellence, quality, profitability and customer satisfaction are everyone’s responsibility, but also know that their commitment should not end there. “Our family of brands touches thousands of lives each and every day and our team, of over 500 strong, takes pride in continuously providing healthy, nutritious and safe foods for all Jamaicans,” says Amiel. “It is through their hard work and dedication over the years, with a strong focus on people, training and technology, that the CB Group has built vertically integrated poultry, swine and egg operations, the most modern feed mill in the Caribbean and today, leads the Safe Food Movement.”

Corporate responsibility also ranks high on the corporate agenda, and the Group supports a number of educational and youth development programmes, as well as participating in local and national events, contributing significantly to community needs.

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Future workThe CB Group plans to expand further its culinary blueprint

for successful business to international markets, having already ventured into American, Canadian and British markets in the last few years. While financial and commercial success is dependent on expanding the company’s processing operation and finding appropriate marketing partners, bosses are aware that an authentic taste of the Caribbean is becoming a tasty incitement to more and more people. “Tourists that visit here should be able to take home some of the flavours they were exposed to, so expanding into herbs and spices as well as canned products should enable us to be in a strong position and broaden our exposure,” asserts Amiel. “We also hope to target the large Caribbean population living abroad, which is as large as it is at home. In a city like London, if they have jerk chicken or pork flavoured with our products, they can remember what food back home tastes like.

“In North America, Canada and other parts of the world, I have noticed that bigger supermarket chains are targeting non-native people so as not to lose out on niche markets. They are increasingly incorporating sections in their shops to accommodate goods from particular countries. So we are hopeful our products can become the norm in these areas.”

The Hendrickson family has certainly staked its claim as one of the definitive culinary purveyors of Jamaica, providing people at home and abroad with the highest quality Jamaican foods. And expansion will continue: in the last decade, the Group has invested hundreds of millions in hotel acquisition and plant upgrading, expansion and refurbishing. And most recently, in an important step to help grow the overall pork market in the country and thus boosting consumption, the company opened Jamaica’s first pork dedicated retail store last year. The 12fk foot facility cost $10m, with the sole focus to raise standards in the sector, while supporting pig farmers in the

country. Business maintains a lucrative but supportive impact on Jamaica, supplying financial muscle for international trade, and creating many opportunities for future employment through its growth. As more people discover the plethora of culinary delights the Caribbean has to offer, financial and cultural prosperity for the CB Group looks certain to continue.