2 weeks ago
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In the nearly eighteen months since Dwaine Williams has been leading Jamaica’s largest paint manufacturer, Berger, as its top boss, the marketing and distribution specialist has been resetting the business and recolouring its bottom line.
Coming off a year of record revenue and strong profits, Williams is already looking ahead to the next period, saying his focus is squarely on how to consistently deliver good performance over time.
In 2023, Berger Paints Jamaica made a rare and hefty loss – $218.42 million – its first yearly loss in three decades, a review of historic stock market records dating back to 1995 shows.
But last year, 2024, the paint company roared back with a profit of $105.68 million. It wasn’t its best performance, historically, but still stood out as the fifth time Berger Jamaica was booking yearly profit above $100 million over the span of the three decades. The paint maker previously did so in 2021, and from 2016 to 2018, a time within which its terminal accounting period switched from March to December.
The turnaround came amid investments in new equipment, retail network expansion, and product innovation. In recent times, Berger has introduced four-head fillers, throwing out single-head fillers to cut throughput time on its production lines; opened three specialist paint stores, one each in Kingston, May Pen and Montego Bay; and more than doubled the range of colours for its most popular product.
The paint company’s product range includes Berger 303 Flat, 404 Gloss, Everglow, Magicote and top-of-the-line Royale. This is in addition to specialist products such as alkali sealer, rust pro, wood primer and roof compound, along with Trowel On, a one-step coating product that is applied to walls prior to painting.
The latter product is aimed squarely at the large-project segment of the construction sector, where Berger has been losing out to imported textured finishes utilised for hotel projects and housing developments. But the paint company is fight back, having invested $130 million in an upgraded coatings plant at its Kingston complex that tripled the production capacity for Trowel On.
At one time, Berger Jamaica was said to control a super-majority of the paint market, but current feedback indicates that its share is now around 52 per cent, forcing Jamaica’s 72-year-old and largest paint company to become more aggressive in defending its turf in a competitive arena that includes the likes of BH Paints and Sherwin-Williams, and smaller players such as EdgeChem and Diamond Paints.
Williams said Berger’s strong decorative brands – Berger 303, Everglow and Magicote – are the most dominant products in the market. He added that since the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the fastest growing products has been low sheen paint because of its durability.
“Back in the day it was flat; low sheen was an anomaly,” Williams said in an interview with the Financial Gleaner.
For walls painted with low sheen that are defaced by drawings and scribblings, cleaning it won’t wipe away the paint, he explained. “You can’t do that with flat paint,” Williams asserted.
As for the company’s bargain brand, Magicote, its limited colour range has drawn complaints from loyal customers wanting more options than the 15 on offer.
“One of the feedback items coming from the trade was, ‘We love Magicote, but the colour is getting a little tired’, and so on. That insight drove us to launch, last year, Magicote Low Sheen,” Williams said.
“With the low sheen, we added a significant upweighting of colour options, moving from about 15 to 36 colours, and that has been doing extremely well,” he added.
Williams, who became general manager of Berger Paints Jamaica Limited in October 2023, said the paint company’s strategy will continue to evolve.
Back in 2020, amid declining market share, Berger entered the retail paint market directly for the first time. Last December, the company opened its third retail store at Fairview in Montego Bay, adding to those already operational in Kingston and May Pen.
“Some of our competitors are more heavily leveraged in focusing on their own stores and owning most of their distribution; and some are like us, who have a hybrid; and some are exclusively going to market through specialist paint stores, hardwares, et cetera,” said Williams.
He added that Berger would continue to augment its route to market around retail and hardware stores, while adjusting operations based on feedback from customers. He contends that the innovations and marketing efforts are paying off at the top line.
For the financial year ended December 2024, Berger’s paint sales hit $3.49 billion in revenue, which was just about four per cent more than the $3.36 billion for 2023. The majority of those revenues, $3.48 billion, came from domestic sales.
It was the company’s fourth consecutive year of revenue above the $3 billion mark.
Williams is Jamaican, “born and bred”, but was actually working in Trinidad & Tobago as an employee of cigarette maker British American Tobacco Plc, when he was recruited to run the Berger Jamaica operation.
Over the years, Williams has worked with the likes of beer maker Red Stripe Jamaica, rum maker J. Wray & Nephew Limited, and Lasco. He was attached to BAT subsidiary West Indies Tobacco Company when he was scouted.
“The conversation that brought me here was through a relationship and really positive work experience I had with one of the senior members within ANSA McAL; and when he got wind that they were looking for talent in Jamaica, he reached out to me and asked me if he was approved to pass on my information,” Williams said.
That led to a round of consultations, followed by Williams flying to Jamaica along with the leadership from the paints and coatings sector within the ANSA McAL Group.
“We did a walk-through ... and got the pitch from them, and I was excited about what I observed to be the potential of a great business and how I can participate in driving the resurgence,” Williams recounted.
“Being able to come back home and take up the helm of such a historically rich enterprise, with the support of a” strong conglomerate’s that willing to invest in the business, “is something that excites me”, he said.
Williams took over the role of general manager from Shashi Mahase around the same time that Berger Jamaica had appointed a new chairman, Christian Llanos, who replaced Adam Sabga.
“Some of the flowers that I’m reaping were seeds planted before my onboarding, to be fair to those who preceded me,” Williams said.
The launch into retail happened under Mahase’s tenure and the former GM was also in charge when Berger Jamaica began a new project to expand and modernise its coating plant. Williams continued those projects.
But having given credit to both his predecessors, as well as the Berger workforce for the teamwork that generated the turnaround, he is already looking towards this year and beyond.
“That was yesterday’s results,” he said of the turnaround.
“The focus is on what 2025 is going to deliver,” Williams added, noting that he has a fairly young executive team, about half of whom were brought on board since he took over.
“We expect in two, three, five years, when we look back, we’ll all be pleased at the hard work and what we have been able to deliver for ourselves, the teams we lead, our shareholders and the lovers of this brand,” Williams said.
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