BPO company IBEX plans rollout to three more parishes
BUSINESS PROCESS outsourcing company IBEX Global Solutions says it plans to expand to at least three other parishes in the short term, which would boost its Jamaican workforce to 5,000, up from the 500 it started with in June this year.
The Portmore, St Catherinebased operation now occupies roughly 45,600 square feet of leased space on the Portmore Pines Plaza but is already eyeing a shuttered supermarket site just behind its location to expand within Portmore, site director and country manager Dalgleish Joseph told Gleaner Business.
“We can take over, completely renovate, and set up about 600 more works stations there, which can mean just about 1,200 more employees working in that building, in conjunction with what we have now,” Joseph said.
“Right now, we have four shifts, with operations starting from 7 a.m. to midnight but soon we will be moving to 24 hours. When that happens, the shift system will increase,” he said.
IBEX, an American company headquartered in Washington, DC, offers customer care, email chat and back-office support to over 70 global clients. The Portmore operation is likely to double to 1,000 staff members when the site reaches full capacity, Joseph said.
“We expect to be at full capacity by just after March. Right now, we are already looking for strategic areas not just in Portmore, but in Kingston,” he said.
IBEX CEO Robert ‘Bob’ Dechant said Montego Bay, Mandeville, and May Pen are prime targets for IBEX expansion. The company offers onshore, nearshore, and offshore business process solutions to seven countries across its 22 sites through a network of 15,000 employees who deliver services in over 20 languages. farmer yield through genetically sound animals, improvements to land and fodder, as well as increased payments to farmers for milk supplies.
Total fresh milk produced averages 12.7 million litres annually now, but the Jamaica Dairy Development Board has indicated that the country needs at least 40 million litres to satisfy local demand.
That is where Seprod’s plan for the privatepublic partnership comes in, Pandohie said, while noting the details will be revealed later.
Around 90 per cent of Jamaica’s milk and dairy consumption is fed by imports, the company said, citing 2012 data which valued imports at roughly $50 million.
Jamaicans drink 105 millilitres of milk per day, which is a third less per capita than Latin America and the rest of the Caribbean.
“The Jamaican average is half of the World Health Organisation daily requirement,” said Seprod.
The consumption levels are partially health related as some 50 per cent of the Jamaicans are deemed lactose intolerant. A week ago, Seprod launched a lactose-free milk to tap into that market segment.
“We have opened up ourselves to serving more people (and) more people have been asking for it, so we expect it to continue to grow,” Pandohie said of the new product.