By Lavern Clarke, Staff Reporter
Scott
PATRICK SCOTT has short term plans to double production of the 2.5 million cases of beverage that the local Coca-Cola plant now produces, the Facey Commodity Company Limited boss announced within hours of installing his own management and operations team yesterday.
The Jamaican company has assumed control of the plant, equipment and 40 trucks that it bought from Caribbean Bottlers Jamaica Limited/Coca-Cola Jamaica, and was revving up the plant at mid-morning to restart production, which was shut down to effect the transition.
It took just under a year to cement the deal that gives Facey the franchise to manufacture and distribute the popular brand.
"Our mission is to get Coca-Cola into every nook and cranny of Jamaica," said the Facey managing director/chief executive officer, sounding upbeat, and congratulating his team "for making the deal a success."
The former owners have already developed the channels for distribution. Facey's strategy will be to "grow the channels," said Scott. Such operational decisions on volume production are solely for Facey to make, as Coca-Cola sets no quotas, he told Wednesday Business.
But the company does have rigid requirements for ensuring that the quality of its products is maintained, and will maintain a monitoring role on the production side.
"The Coca-Cola team complements us. I haven't found any dictates," said Scott. Facey was selected after Coca-Cola had considered all the major local distributors.
The new franchisee will buy the concentrate from Coca-Cola Company for the four lines of drinks it will be producing Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta and Cannings as well as source some other inputs in what Scott described as a partnership arrangement with the beverage giant. The plant produces its own containers to package the drinks.
Coca-Cola Company, a global company with its regional operations centred in Trinidad, will continue to offer marketing support to Facey. How much the local company will spend on marketing will be "agreed on jointly at budget time" on a yearly basis. The budget will also be developed in conjunction with Coca-Cola, said Facey.
The Spanish Town Road plant is equipped with state-of-the-art machinery.
"It's a very modern plant," said Scott. Facey is looking to tighten operations on the manufacturing side, and so will be employing "the majority, but not all," of the 95 staff that manned it under CBJL.
The franchise is expected to be among the top earners for Facey, whose operations include the "very lucrative" distribution contract for Digicel's phone cards, says Scott. Coca-Cola, a 116-year-old company, operates in some 200 countries worldwide and earns over 70 per cent of its income from its operations outside the United States.
