1 month ago
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Bondholders of Specialty Coffee will meet with their trustee, JCSD Trustee Services Limited, today, Friday, to vote on issues surrounding the delayed bond payout by the Michael Lee-Chin controlled coffee investment company.
Bondholders received notice of the online meeting on the Zoom platform earlier this month. The precise details of the vote remain unclear as JCSD Trustee Services declined to comment.
“Direct the bondholder to the JCSD. I have no further comment at this time,” said Andrea Kelly, general manager of the JCSD Trustee Services Limited and its direct parent company Jamaica Central Securities Depository.
Additionally, the Financial Gleaner’s bondholder source was also unclear.
The bond initially matured last March but was extended to June. Last November, Lee-Chin told the Financial Gleaner that he would meet bondholders to discuss the matter. He said then the meeting would focus on establishing a timeline for the repayment of the principal bond debt. The Financial Gleaner reached out to Lee-Chin for comment via text but got no response up to press time.
“Lee-Chin will not be there,” claimed the bondholder source, a view he transmitted after enquiring among other bondholders. “But since it’s Zoom, he can be present and none of us would know,” the person said.
Last year, bondholders rejected a proposal to extend the bond for 12 months to October 2025. Specialty Coffee initially issued bonds in 2021 to refinance $1.9 billion in debt. The bond was split into multiple tranches with varying interest rates. A local-currency tranche of up to $500 million was priced at 9.75 per cent interest, while a US$8.7-million tranche was priced at 7.25 per cent interest. There is also another local-currency tranche of $184 million that pays interest at 9.75 per cent.
Today’s meeting follows on from last October’s request from the JCSD Trustee Services to convene a meeting, provided at least 25 per cent of the bondholders agreed. The letter also added that the trustee had “not received from the issuer any further correspondence or commitment in respect to the principal repayment and/or outstanding interest which became due”.
The outstanding bond replaced the original bonds from 2016, which raised $1.8 billion at 9.5 per cent interest, used to acquire Mavis Bank Coffee Factory for $1.3 billion and meeting working capital needs.
Lee-Chin’s coffee assets include Mavis Bank Coffee Factory and Wallenford Estate. The latter business was acquired by Specialty Coffee from Jamaica Producers Group and Pan-Jamaican Investment Trust in 2016. Wallenford, one of the oldest coffee brands in the island, holds some 5,000 acres of land. It historically produced the bulk of the Jamaica Blue Mountain and Jamaica High Mountain coffee crop. Mavis Bank, a major producer of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, owns multiple coffee brands led by Jablum.
English (US) ·