3 months ago
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Berger Paints Jamaica Limited is making a bigger push into the Caribbean.
“We’re going after everything,” General Manager Dwaine Williams told the Financial Gleaner on the sidelines of the company’s annual general meeting.
The team at Berger Jamaica, dubbed the ‘colour warriors’, made good strides in 2024 by delivering a year-end profit of $105 million, improving revenue and gaining domestic market share, and now the focus will shift to external markets, Williams said.
Berger already exports to the Caribbean, but not on a large scale.
“We invested in installing the capacity, getting the portfolio set, and now we have a regional export team through our shared companies who will be going out there and securing the business for us,” Williams said of plans for the rest of the year. His reference to shared companies relates to the members of the ANSA McAL Group of Trinidad & Tobago, which is also the majority owner of Berger Jamaica.
The first markets to be tapped are Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana.
“We have installed the cans that they love, and it’s really to just see how we can make partnerships and structure value chains that make us the preferred brand and supplier in what is becoming a very fractured and competitive space for coatings products,” Williams said of company strategy going forward.
ANSA McAL is a large conglomerate operating across various sectors and multiple markets. Its activities include automotive, beverage, construction, distribution, financial services, manufacturing, real estate, retail, media, and service sectors, encompassing 48 companies. The group has subsidiaries in Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, St Kitts-Nevis, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica and the United States.
The group of companies includes Berger and Penta paints, while the coatings division has four plants, one each in Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada and Barbados. There is also a marketing and distribution mechanism operating within the Caricom bloc, according to Williams.
Asked about the possibility of a strong Jamaican brand like Berger may hurt other ANSA McAL paint brands, he indicated that the products would be positioned differently in the market.
“Across all goods, consumer and otherwise, you have a level of complexity, you have a level of contestable space where everybody is vying for that consumer dollar. So we will set the value chain up, the value segments up, and based on what works best for the business, based on local, based on portfolio value chain, we will collectively service export through those means,” Williams said.
Berger Jamaica has unique items in its portfolio, such as Magicote paints, and is the only member of the ANSA McAL Group that does trowel-on coatings, he added.
“So, there are spaces that we will be the source market for export, and in other arenas, we will either be the selected supplier, or if there are any challenges with our sister companies – we have standardised our labels, etc – we can step into the gap,” he said.
The Caribbean push comes after several expansion projects at the paint maker’s factory in Kingston. In addition to quadrupling the number of filling spouts, the company has invested $150 million to more than double production capacity at its trowel-on factory, with the possibility of scaling up the operation. The company has also expanded its product offerings by increasing its colour range and adding variety to its value brand Magicote.
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