GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

AS Bry­den and Sons Hold­ings Ltd (AS­BH), a sub­sidiary of the Ja­maican con­glom­er­ate Se­prod, yes­ter­day an­nounced it has ac­quired a 44.8 per cent strate­gic stake in Caribbean Pro­duc­ers Ja­maica (CPJ).

The Ja­maica Ob­serv­er re­port­ed yes­ter­day that the ac­qui­si­tion price for the 44.8 per cent share­hold­ing was J$5.17 bil­lion (US$32.82 mil­lion).

A no­tice post­ed on the Ja­maica Stock Ex­change (JSE) yes­ter­day stat­ed that AS­BH ac­knowl­edged that its ac­qui­si­tion rep­re­sents in ex­cess of 20 per cent of the is­sued share cap­i­tal of CPJ, pur­suant to the JSE’s gen­er­al prin­ci­ples re­lat­ing to take-overs and merg­ers and the ap­plic­a­ble se­cu­ri­ties reg­u­la­tions in Ja­maica.

CPJ is a food and pre­mi­um bev­er­age dis­trib­u­tor for ma­jor glob­al brands with a fo­cus on serv­ing ho­tels and re­sorts. CPJ op­er­ates in Ja­maica and St. Lu­cia.

In March this year, AS­BH pur­chased a 55 per cent con­trol­ling stake in St Michael, Bar­ba­dos-based re­tail­er and dis­trib­u­tor Stans­feld Scott (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd (SSB).

With this ac­qui­si­tion, AS­BH will ex­pand its foot­print be­yond Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, and T&T, in­to Ja­maica and St Lu­cia.

“This in­vest­ment is con­sis­tent with AS­BH’s strat­e­gy of ex­pand­ing our busi­ness re­gion­al­ly. AS­BH is now the largest share­hold­er of CPJ. We in­tend to con­tin­ue to make ad­di­tion­al pur­chas­es of CPJ shares in the fu­ture with the ob­jec­tive of ul­ti­mate­ly ac­quir­ing con­trol. We will make ad­di­tion­al dis­clo­sures if this oc­curs in ac­cor­dance with ap­plic­a­ble reg­u­la­tions,” Nicholas Scott, di­rec­tor of AS­BH said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

Mark Hart, CPJ’s co-founder and out­go­ing chair­man and in­ter­im CEO al­so not­ed that over the last 30 years, CPJ has be­come the pre-em­i­nent dis­trib­u­tor of food and bev­er­age prod­ucts to ho­tels and re­sorts in Ja­maica and be­yond.

"AS Bry­den shares our val­ues and our cul­ture and has a track record of build­ing and sup­port­ing high-per­form­ing man­age­ment teams," he added.

With this ac­qui­si­tion, they are set to be ma­jor changes at CPJ go­ing for­ward.

Richard Pan­do­hie, the CEO of Se­prod and AS­BH, will be ap­point­ed chair­man of CPJ.

Mean­while,Tom Tyler, CPJ’s co-founder will be ap­point­ed deputy chair­man of CPJ and will serve as a con­sul­tant to the com­pa­ny fo­cused on cus­tomer and sup­pli­er re­la­tion­ships and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Mark Hart and Can­dace Hart will re­main the di­rec­tors of CPJ.

Nicholas Hospedales will be ap­point­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of CPJ. He is a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive at AS­BH, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly led its food and gro­cery, pre­mi­um bev­er­age and op­er­a­tions units over the last decade.

The state­ment al­so not­ed that in ad­di­tion to Pan­do­hie and Hospedales, AS­BH di­rec­tors Nicholas Scott, Michael Cony­ers and David Fran­co will be ap­point­ed new di­rec­tors of CPJ re­plac­ing Christo­pher Berry, Kon­rad Berry, Camille Shields, Frank O’Dowd and Mark Hall who will re­sign.

“Work­ing to­geth­er CPJ and AS­BH will grow sig­nif­i­cant­ly and ex­pand their ge­o­graph­ic foot­print through­out the re­gion. I’m ex­cit­ed to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of these two im­por­tant Caribbean com­pa­nies,” Pan­do­hie added.