THERE ARE not too many companies in Jamaica which are 80 years old or over. Grace, Kennedy is one of them. This company has become an institutional landmark of Jamaican private enterprise.
The Grace story began in the heart of the commercial district of downtown Kingston at 64 Harbour Street in 1922 and the company still maintains its headquarters there. Among the many changes that the company has successfully coped with is the drastic deterioration of city centre as the commercial capital of the country.
Grace, Kennedy has progressed through the decolonisation of the country, the achievement of Independence, political experiments with state control of the commanding heights of the economy and with liberalisation, through periods of economic growth, stagnation and decline, which this newspaper has chronicled. The company has grown from a start-up staff of 15 people to becoming one of the largest employers. It has been transformed from a single company engaged in the importation and distribution of foodstuff into a giant conglomerate of companies engaged in businesses from foods to insurance, computers and money transfer, and has become a major exporter.
Grace, Kennedy has been an impressive corporate citizen. A previous chief executive, Carlton Alexander, was the leading light in the founding of the PSOJ. The company runs a Foundation which hosts an annual lecture series as an important contribution to thought. Two university professorial chairs have been endowed and the current CEO is engaged in public service at the highest level.
We share the view of Douglas Orane, who came up through the ranks, that this mature and very successful Jamaican company has many valuable lessons to share, lessons of survival, innovation and growth often in an economically hostile environment.
Too many of our highly regarded case studies are external to our own experience.
At the 70th anniversary, the distinguished UWI historian Douglas Hall was commissioned to write a history of Grace, Kennedy as a "story of Jamaican enterprise within the context of the country's history during the period". That product of Professor Hall's scholarship will remain valuable reading for a long time.
