Kremi sales warm up
Caribbean Cream Limited, manufacturers of Kremi ice cream, continued on its trajectory of growth year-on-year, reporting a 13 per cent increase in sales and profits totalling 89 million.
“The company continued strong, where revenues were increased and sales increased by 13 per cent. This marked seven consecutive years of sales growth”, said Christopher Clarke, managing director and CEO of the company.
In its annual report to shareholders the company said that “the company’s sales revenue for this financial year was $1.6 billion compared to $1.4 billion in the previous year, representing an increase of $180 million or 13 per cent”.
The company attributed its increased sales to volume growth and high demand for its newly introduced icicle line boasting what it deems as five fantastic flavours.
“It’s early days yet, but we are very encouraged by the response of the consumers to this brand of products – which now represents 25 per cent of our novelties lines”, Clarke said.
“The sales objective for the year was to get closer to the end customer, and this was achieved by increasing the number of locations and size of our company-owned depots,”, he continued.
Addressing shareholders at the annual general meeting held on Tuesday, Clarke said that the recent addition of a new stick line which was commissioned in April of this year will further help to strengthen the increase of sales for the company, though not reflected in quarter one sales, but will begin to do so significantly by next financial year.
“I don’t think it will affect the profits for this financial year, but the year after that it should be a significant contributor by then,” he said in an interview with the Jamaica Observer.
The company which has also highlighted a reduction in its net profit compared to the previous year, says that this is due to several increases in operational costs among which were wage increases, new hires and pension schemes.
Clarke pointed out that a multiple-strategy approach will be used to build out greater profit margins going forward.
“We need to get our margins down [operational cost], we need to be more efficient as a factory. Some ways we can do this is to modernise the plant, train our staff so we can produce better. We just need to make sure we put in these strategies to get there,” he further told the Business Observer.
With the company already controlling an estimated 55 per cent of the market share for ice cream in the country, and time being viewed as early days still, the company in further building out its product offerings has said that it will be going at this strategically.
“We have a lot of areas where we can expand; the stick line is one of them. Icicle is not the only things that you can do on a stick. We’re currently working on a fudge. I can’t say when it’s going to come to market, but we have a product development committee working on a wide range of items”, the CEO shared.