Susan Gordon, Business Reporter
Byron Thompson, managing director of Seprod. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer
Seprod has completed a US$2 million ($132 million) acquisition of the 2,300-acre Belvedere Farm in St. Thomas, effectively increasing its dairy division's capacity for milk production to 10 million litres per year.
With the purchase of Belvedere Limited from Jamaica Flour Mills, Seprod has added another 300 heads of cattle to its holdings, pushing the count to 4,100.
The deal was sealed on Monday.
"We took possession of Belvedere Limited on that date for US$2 million," managing director of Seprod Group, Byron Thompson told Wednesday Business, explaining that the expansion was void of loan financing and internally funded.
He said the Belvedere property was just an extension of Seprod's Serge Island Business in St. Thomas and would be headed by the current general manager of Serge Island Farm, Phillip Webster.
Early last month, Thompson indicated that the scope for expansion at Serge Island, which produces about five million litres of milk per annum, was limited, but that the local market could support more milk production.
Increasing capacity
He said with more mature cows it would take the company less than four years to maximise its increased capacity.
"We are doing nothing of significance at the present just the limited operations of harvesting, however, we are going to establish pastures and a milking pasture, but this won't be done in the first year," he said.
"We are moving the animals over there and are fencing the place," said Thompson.
Seprod will keep the five persons employed to Belvedere Limited who are presently harvesting mangoes, a crop new to Seprod.
Outside of diary, Serge Island produces coconuts, a little citrus, ackees and some 25 acres of coffee. But Thompson said these were minor areas of the operation and makes a small contribution to group revenues compared to to its turnover from its dairy segment.
For its financial year to December 31, 2005, Seprod earned net profits of $750 million on revenues of $3.9 billion.
Dairy - the factory and farms -contributes 25 per cent to revenues, according to Thompson.
susan.smith@gleanerjm.com.
