In June 2022, Ja­maica’s pub­licly list­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion gi­ant, Se­prod, ac­quired 60 per cent of T&T’s pri­vate­ly held dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, AS Bry­den & Sons Hold­ings (AS­BH), for about US$45 mil­lion. That ac­qui­si­tion was fund­ed by a loan of US$25 mil­lion and 6.0% pref­er­ence shares worth US$20 mil­lion.

Se­prod’s share­hold­ing in AS­BH de­clined to 54 per cent when the T&T com­pa­ny ac­quired a small­er lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor, Mi­con Hold­ings, in No­vem­ber 2023, with the own­ers of Mi­con re­ceiv­ing some of Se­prod’s AS­BH shares as pay­ment.

Se­prod’s share­hold­ing in AS­BH de­clined again to 50 per cent in 2024, when the T&T com­pa­ny ac­quired Caribbean Pro­duc­ers Ja­maica for a to­tal of US$54 mil­lion in cash, loans and AS­BH shares. A sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of CPJ’s busi­ness is the man­u­fac­ture and dis­tri­b­u­tion of prod­ucts to Ja­maica’s tourism sec­tor.

Se­prod’s stake in AS­BH climbed back up to 80 per cent when it made an of­fer to ac­quire up to 447,491,012 or­di­nary shares of its sub­sidiary AS­BH, rep­re­sent­ing 29.85 per cent of AS­BH’s out­stand­ing shares.

A T&T com­pa­ny with over 100 years of his­to­ry, AS­BH was list­ed by its par­ent com­pa­ny, Se­prod, on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change in No­vem­ber 2023 and on the T&T Stock Ex­change in Au­gust 2025.

The T&T list­ing was by in­tro­duc­tion, mean­ing no new shares were of­fered to po­ten­tial lo­cal in­vestors, but ex­ist­ing share­hold­ers were able to sell their shares on the lo­cal stock mar­ket.

Richard Pan­do­hie is the CEO of both Se­prod and AS­BH. He spoke to Guardian Me­dia Ltd’s con­sul­tant busi­ness ed­i­tor, An­tho­ny Wil­son, last Thurs­day.

Fol­low­ing is an abridged and light­ly edit­ed ex­tract from that in­ter­view:

Q: Will Melis­sa have a ma­te­r­i­al im­pact on the for­tunes of Se­prod?

A: We have op­er­a­tions right through­out Ja­maica. One of our op­er­a­tions is ac­tu­al­ly owned by Bry­den’s CPJ, which is pri­mar­i­ly in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor.

CPJ would have been now go­ing in­to our peak sea­son, with the win­ter sea­son, which is be­tween De­cem­ber 15 and April 15. And with no win­ter sea­son or the win­ter sea­son to be bad­ly af­fect­ed, we es­ti­mate that 50 per cent of the win­ter sea­son will be lost.

So that will have an im­pact in terms of that en­ti­ty, CPJ. It was al­so bad­ly af­fect­ed by dam­age. We’re now back up and run­ning. Dis­tri­b­u­tion is back up. Man­u­fac­tur­ing start­ed up last week. So we start­ed up op­er­a­tions, but I think 50 per cent of the sales to the ho­tel in­dus­try is now un­der threat.

That will have an im­pact on our num­bers for sure. The rest of the or­gan­i­sa­tions are pri­mar­i­ly based out­side of the ma­jor hur­ri­cane path.

The op­er­a­tions in St Cather­ine, Kingston, and St Thomas are all un­af­fect­ed to a large ex­tent. Over­all, our ex­po­sure was to one com­pa­ny and that com­pa­ny is ex­posed to the ho­tel in­dus­try.

Q: So the di­rect ma­te­r­i­al im­pact is go­ing to be to CPJ, which was ac­quired by AS Bry­den some­time last year?

A: Yes, at the end of June 2024, rough­ly.

Q: Is that the se­quence of im­pact? Be­cause CPJ sells to the tourism sec­tor in Ja­maica and the tourism sec­tor is ex­pect­ed to be im­pact­ed. And be­cause CPJ is owned by AS Bry­den, there’s go­ing to be a ma­te­r­i­al im­pact on AS Bry­den’s bot­tom line?

A: It will flow up. It will def­i­nite­ly flow up. I think that there are some as­pects, thoug:. We lost in­ven­to­ry, maybe around US$14 mil­lion, but we are in­sured. So there is some im­pact.

We’re go­ing to piv­ot ob­vi­ous­ly, with re­tail space and to oth­er mar­kets with­in the re­gion. I’m not sure where the ef­fect is go­ing to land at, but we be­lieve that there will be a 6.0 to 7.0 per cent im­pact on the bot­tom line at this stage.

Q: And what do you ex­pect the im­pact on the top line to be?

A: For the over­all group? About 50 per cent of CPJ is their ho­tel busi­ness. It’s 60 per cent of our to­tal busi­ness. It’s 30 per cent with­in that con­text. They are like 12 per cent of the group.

I’m look­ing at some­where be­tween 5.0 to 7.0 per cent and that will flow straight through to the bot­tom line.

Q: Ab­sent Melis­sa, how was that ac­qui­si­tion go­ing and how is CPJ ex­pect­ed to re­cov­er from the hit from Melis­sa?

Pre-Melis­sa, we were go­ing re­al­ly well. Then we start­ed our ERP (en­ter­prise re­source plan­ning) roll­out that the busi­ness in­her­it­ed and we ap­proved to con­tin­ue; had some chal­lenges there.

And so that im­pact­ed the busi­ness in terms of costs, in terms of just ful­fill­ment of goods in Q3. You’ll see that in the Q3 re­sults. Sub­se­quent­ly, we be­gan to sta­bilise, get­ting our ful­fill­ment rate back up, start­ing to get some of the ex­pect­ed ben­e­fits of the sys­tem.

That was one thing. We did have quite a bit of cash flow tied up in in­ven­to­ry. We had our own US$42 mil­lion of in­ven­to­ry as we are go­ing in­to the peak sea­son and we are ex­pect­ing to do very well there.

So pre-Melis­sa, CPJ had a chal­leng­ing Q3 and Q2. It was now sta­bil­is­ing and looked to get back to its nor­mal run rate. That was a ma­jor chal­lenge we had. But al­so we are piv­ot­ing that busi­ness, ex­pand­ing it in­to the re­tail space and we’re con­sol­i­dat­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing in­to CPJ from a cou­ple of coun­tries with­in the Caribbean in terms of their meat pro­cess­ing plant.

They do things like burg­ers and ten­der­loins and var­i­ous things. They do seafood pro­cess­ing al­so, con­sol­i­dat­ing that in Ja­maica to sup­ply a cou­ple of the mar­kets in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

The trend out­look for CPJ was very pos­i­tive and it is re­al­ly sup­posed to be a net earn­er for an ex­change for the Bry­den’s group.

Q So tak­ing Melis­sa in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, where do you see Bry­den and CPJ and Se­prod?

A: Melis­sa, right now we’re talk­ing about the re­cov­ery. You have to grab a ma­jor re­build­ing.

There is a lot of stuff to be done. A lot of re­sources are flow­ing to the coun­try, whether from re­lief agen­cies, from the di­as­po­ra, lots of homes have to be re­built, and peo­ple have to con­sume. So you’re go­ing to get a growth pe­ri­od al­so, es­pe­cial­ly along the food and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal space.

We are go­ing to have a short-term chal­lenge ini­tial­ly be­cause some of the peo­ple are af­fect­ed; ap­prox­i­mate­ly 180,000 to 200,000 Ja­maicans were es­ti­mat­ed to be im­pact­ed. The im­pact is ac­tu­al­ly a lot more than that when you con­sid­er ex­tend­ed fam­i­lies, et cetera.

The Ja­maican tourist in­dus­try is go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence a lit­tle bit of a slow pe­ri­od in No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber, maybe un­til mid-Jan­u­ary to start back up.

There’ll be some chal­lenges in some chan­nels, but on the flip side, there are chan­nels that are now strong­ly pos­i­tive that we didn’t see be­fore. For ex­am­ple, if you’re in this food space, as we are, there’s a huge de­mand for peo­ple to pro­vide meals to peo­ple who don’t have, to pro­vide care pack­ages, those types of things. It’s a mix, you know.

In the case of Trinidad, though, Melis­sa, I mean, we had a lit­tle Melis­sa in the bud­get with the al­co­hol tax­es. Those are huge. That’s go­ing to have an im­pact on the busi­ness al­so.

We’re try­ing to as­sess how that’s go­ing to be. Will the new sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased price of al­co­hol in Trinidad cre­ate an il­lic­it chan­nel where peo­ple will be smug­gling and there­fore you lose vol­ume, et cetera? There are a cou­ple of things hap­pen­ing that we have to look around the group, but the huge op­por­tu­ni­ty for us con­tin­ues to be syn­er­gy ex­trac­tion.

We’re go­ing to do a bet­ter job of just try­ing to ac­cel­er­ate the ex­trac­tions and to make sure the scale that we have built up with ac­qui­si­tions ac­tu­al­ly trans­late to syn­er­gies and to cost ef­fi­cien­cies and al­so to ex­pan­sion in a way that in a prof­itable ex­pan­sion.

You’ll see a lot more of those num­bers com­ing through in re­sults in 2026.

Q: Just cir­cling back a lit­tle bit to the im­pact of the ex­cise and the cus­toms du­ties on AS Bry­den. Can you give me a lit­tle bit more colour on that im­pact?

A: We are the prin­ci­pals of Moet Hen­nessy, Di­a­geo, for ex­am­ple, sev­er­al of the pre­mi­um bev­er­age play­ers. Those prod­ucts have been im­pact­ed by al­most a 100 per cent du­ty in­crease. It’s a sig­nif­i­cant change in the price to con­sumers, and that will no doubt have an im­pact on con­sump­tion.

It’s go­ing to be hard to say be­cause it’s a func­tion of how well the Gov­ern­ment po­lices the bor­ders in terms of the il­lic­it trade and mak­ing sure that those don’t get in­to the mar­ket.

If that is con­trolled, then you prob­a­bly get a 30 per cent re­duc­tion in con­sump­tion. If it’s not con­trolled, it could be 50 per cent and more re­duc­tion in that con­sump­tion in the mar­ket. And that will have a ma­te­r­i­al im­pact on the busi­ness.

Q: So you would be ad­vo­cat­ing for the gov­ern­ment to tight­en up on the pre­ven­tion of il­le­gal al­co­hol smug­gling in­to T&T?

A: If the Gov­ern­ment’s ob­jec­tive is rev­enue, and to pro­tect the rev­enue that they wish to get, then they’re go­ing to have to al­so tight­en up on the bor­ders to make sure the il­lic­it play­ers don’t be­come a ma­jor play­er in the in­dus­try.

But now it’s go­ing to be su­per at­trac­tive to play in that space, right? So I’m hop­ing the gov­ern­ment will put in the req­ui­site re­sources to mon­i­tor and po­lice smug­gling.