JamTeas finds buyer for Bell Road base
AFTER ABOUT a decade of operation at its Bell Road base in Kingston, Jamaican Teas Limited has found a buyer for the 22,000-square-foot factory, which it is vacating for new premises.
The maker of Tetley and Caribbean Dream teas said in a market filing that it entered into an agreement on Tuesday, March 12, to sell the tea factory to a thirdparty purchaser. The transaction is expected to close in April 2024, but the buyer and sale price were not disclosed.
JamTeas CEO John Mahfood said only that the purchaser was a small family-owned business, who may reveal itself in due course.
The tea group’s ongoing relocation to its new home at Temple Hall in the hills of St Andrew is now set to be finalised by June. However, Mahfood told the Financial Gleaner that the sale agreement gives JamTeas up to August to vacate the Bell Road property.
The move will complete the process of consolidating the operations at JamTeas which started in February this year, when the company relocated its dry pack operation from 10,000 square feet of rented space at Montgomery Avenue in Kingston to the new Temple Hall complex.
“That was the first part of the move, because we had rented that space. That division does soups and seasonings, along with instant ginger, and so on,” Mahfood said.
Next, the company will relocate the equipment for the tea manufacturing division, which will be moving from Bell Road. Those preparations are under way, he said.
Jamaican Teas is in the business of tea-making, spice and soup manufacturing, grocery retail, investments and real estate development.
The manufacturing operations are being hived off into a new company called Caribbean Dreams Foods Limited, CDFL, for which Charles Barrett was named as general manager in charge of operations last year. Initially, Caribbean Dreams Foods was expected to be headed by Dianna Blake-Bennett as CEO, but she resigned from the JamTeas group last year.
The factory at Temple Hall was acquired through CDFL, according to JamTeas’ newly released annual report.
Jamaican Teas is a decades-old company that moved to the Bell Road base in 2014, four years after going public and listing on the junior stock market. The consolidation moves the export-focused company further away from Kingston’s cargo port, but Mahfood has said the relocation would reap savings by cutting down on administrative and operational costs such as security and utilities.