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Shrugging off losses that broke its winning streak after more than three decades of operation, Paramount Trading Jamaica Limited is back in the black for year ending May 2025.
In its newly released year-end financial report, the chemicals company spun from a loss of $14.36 million in 2024 to profit of $26.14 million.
CEO Hugh Graham credited the turnaround to a relentless search for greater efficiency, changes in personnel, and new business alliances.
The personnel changes started when new Chief Operating Officer, Everton Younger, came aboard with supply chain and operations management expertise back in January 2024. Over a year later, Bruno Loffler joined the team as group head of finance and administration, effective March 1, 2025, just as Dr Jacqueline Leckie, who tendered her resignation as chief financial officer and chief digital strategy officer, exited the company the day prior.
Graham said Paramount took a good look at its people resources to determine the talent gap and went about plugging them through new hires.
“I believe that is the most significant part of the turnaround. There’s nothing without people. It starts and stops with people. If you have good people, you can get good results. If you have people who are not so good, you’re going to get the results of whatever they bring,” he said.
Additionally, the recent cleaning chemicals manufacturing deal signed with Manpower Maintenance Services is starting to deliver results, he added.
“The relationship that we forged is such that the latest report caught a little bit of it in terms of the manufacturing numbers,” Graham told the Financial Gleaner.
Paramount reported revenue of $1.72 billion for the financial year just ended, up six per cent from $1.62 billion in FY2024. The outturn, however, is still some way off the peak revenues of $2.46 billion that Paramount achieved in 2023. That record also drove the company’s best-ever yearly profit of $245.41 million.
The fall-off in revenue was attributed to the conclusion of large orders that the company filled in 2023, for which there was no repeat or replacement business, Graham said. A large construction adhesives contract for a major hotel construction project in western Jamaica came to an end.
NOT GROWING
In 2024, Paramount began seeking out new ways to bring fresh revenue flows into the company, and took aim at the construction sector.
“It is not that construction is dead. Construction is probably not growing at 12 to 13 per cent, but it is still growing. I don’t know where it is now, but I would imagine that it is somewhere between eight and 10 per cent without seeing data,” Graham said. “If you go to the west, hotels are being built – Princess, Pinnacle, Hard Rock – things are still happening.”
In terms of overall revenue, construction adhesives, at $198.34 million, ranks second only to food-grade chemicals, which brought in $1.27 billion. Graham sees more promise in construction adhesives.
Paramount Trading was founded in February 1991, making it 34 years old. The company began as a manufacturer’s representative and commission agent in Kingston. It now has five reportable operating segments: chemicals, construction and adhesive, manufacturing, transportation, and lubricants.
Although Paramount made a big bet on lubricants back in 2019, with the development of a $700-million, lubricants blending plant, that segment was fourth in the line-up of top revenue earners, at year ending May 2025, having brought in $106.42 million. This outturn was down nearly 31 per cent on the $154 million of lubricants sales in 2023.
Graham said the decline was due to a pullback from full utilisation of the plant, as the company readied itself for a new manufacturing deal that is on the cards.
“We made some adjustments there based on the strategy that we were employing to deliver on what is ahead of us. We had to commit certain resources around that,” Graham said, while declining to name the likely partner and potential size of the contract.
Paramount continues to manufacture lubricants for petroleum marketing company Fesco, which distributes Futroil lubricants, as well as American company Allegheny Petroleum, for which Paramount produces the Altra brand of lubricants.
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