Mr. Desmond Blades, 1991 - 1993

Joined Royal Bank of Canada at the beginning of 1945, spent 3 ½ years with Royal Bank of Canada doing mainly the work of a Cashier.

Joined J.B. Leslie & Company Limited, a small firm of commission agents, in 1948, spent 5 years in the Sales Department and then 2 years in the Insurance Department of J.B. Leslie & Company Limited. I was then recruited by S.P. Musson Son & Company Limited to take over their Trinidad operation which I joined as Manager in March 1955.

I spent 6 ½ years in Trinidad during which time I was very fortunate in being able to make the business profitable, it had been very unprofitable prior to my arrival. S.P. Musson Son & Company Limited also had an operation in Jamaica which was very unprofitable and the board of Directors asked me to come to Jamaica and let them have a report on why the Jamaican operation was unprofitable. I spent a week in Jamaica, wrote a report, identified the problems and the inevitable happened, and that I was told if you can fix it go and fix it.

I was very happy to move to Jamaica, a much bigger market which appeared at that time to have a much greater potential than Trinidad. I moved to Jamaica with my family in 1961 and have lived there ever since.

In Jamaica we started as a small commission agency, but I realized in the early days that this would not be a satisfactory role to play in the future.

On the breakup of the Federation, we formed Musson (Jamaica) Limited and I was given the opportunity to purchase 25% of the shares, in addition, I was granted certain share options which I exercised as soon as these became available. In the meantime, I developed a wholesale provision business which was concentrated mainly on bulk items, like flour, rice, corned beef and similar products. During the era of the 60’s, Jamaica was very keen on expanding its manufacturing base and I felt that this provided many golden opportunities.

We started a number of manufacturing businesses as follows:-

West Indies Metal Products Limited – producing pilfer proof seals for the rum industry. This was extremely profitable while the market was protected, but the powerful rum industry soon persuaded the Government that protection was bad for the industry. The business lasted for about fifteen (15) years, but after the protection was removed, the profitability declined in a serious manner.

The next industry we promoted was Caribbean Bitumuls Jamaica Limited – producing asphalt emulsion for road building and road repairs. This business lasted for about ten (10) years, but never grew to any major size. We then set up Caribbean Milling Jamaica Limited, producing animal feeds of all types, in partnership with a Canadian operation. This came to an end as soon as we discovered that all the money was being made in selling the raw materials to the factory. After the partnership was dissolved we continued with the business for many years in a successful manner.

In the meantime we had set up and acquired a number of smaller operations. We purchased the Lannaman Confectionery plant, we developed a chemical mixing plant and we set up a very successful cosmetic operation producing a full line of Max Factor cosmetics. We purchased a spice factory, which has continued to operate successfully until today. We also purchased a pharmaceutical plant, producing and bottling simple pharmaceuticals. We then bought a factory producing plastic bags and another factory producing paper bags and toilet paper both of these operations continue until the present day.

In more recent times we have purchased the Xerox operation in Jamaica as well as the Xerox operation in Curacao, Aruba and Dominican Republic. We are now negotiating to purchase the Xerox operation in a number of Central American countries. We have expanded our basic operation by buying T. Geddes Grant (Dist.) Limited which is the Jamaican operation of T. Geddes Grant Limited. We have also bought Facey Commodity Company Limited in association with Seprod Limited, which is already an associated company with Musson (Jamaica) Limited, being 33 1/3% owned by Musson (Jamaica) Limited. Our group probably has the largest turnover in Jamaica and would rank among the first Ten (10) companies in operation.

In addition to Facey Commodity Company Limited we have recently bought, through Seprod Limited, the Serge Island Manufacturing and Farm and these are proving to be very successful.

In Barbados we have during the past three (3) years set up Facey Commodity Barbados Limited, which handles the Digicel products. This operation is negotiating to purchase a number of other operations which we hope will be equally successful. We have also, through, Facey Commodity Barbados Limited, acquired Alamac Investments Limited and are in the process of investing in a large expansion programme.

Our group is in the process of opening a large operation in Germany where we will handle cellular phones and cards as well as an operation in the United States of America for the same purpose.