Food and financial group GraceKennedy Limited (GK) is seeking to generate more revenues from the lucrative tourism industry and aims to achieve double-digit growth from the area this year.

However, while tight-lipped about how its sales to tourism entities have been growing in recent times, citing that he doesn’t want to give away any competitive advantage, Group CEO Don Wehby said the outlook remains very encouraging for selling to the fast-growing sector.

“Our projections for this area is very strong and all our products are growing and what I can say is that we will be growing double digits this year,” Wehby said in terse response to queries from the Jamaica Observer.

“We believe there will be significant opportunities for growth in tourism and that is going to be a big focus for us in terms of supplying the tourist industry,” he also told the company’s over 18,000 shareholders gathered in-person and virtually at an annual general meeting held last week.

Jamaica’s tourism industry, which continues to surpass pre-COVID levels, has up to last month welcomed a record two million visitors during the first five months of this year. Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett, breaking out the figures, said approximately 1.3 million were stopover arrivals ­— those staying in paid for accommodation — and 745,812 in cruise passengers. Together they spent US$1.9 billion on Jamaica’s tourism product.

The Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) in its recent forecast said it expects the sector to expand by as much as 3 per cent this fiscal year. During the first quarter of this year, the tourism sector is estimated to have grown 6.3 per cent, more than three times faster than the 1.9 per cent growth recorded for the overall economy.

“The industry continues to benefit from increased travel, due to growth recorded in the main source markets and effective marketing strategies,” the PIOJ said in its report on the economy’s latest performance.

GK’s Food Division continues to lead the bulk of its growth and accounts for more than 80 per cent of group revenues. It brought in $34.1 billion of the $42-billion revenue GK recorded in the first three months of the year.

Targeting further expansion across its Hi-Lo supermarket chain, the company is to build-out of a new location in St Thomas at the old Goodyear Tyre Factory that is now being redeveloped into an urban centre with Government offices, business process outsourcing entities, restaurants and other amenities.

GK, which is well on the way to achieving its vision 2030 objective, which among other things, aims to position it in becoming the number one Caribbean brand in the world, said all targets and strategies remain on track to deliver increased shareholder value.

“We are committed to delivering on our promises to shareholders. As a billion-dollar company, our goal at GraceKennedy is to ensure sustained performance and increased profitability, both in the short and long term. We are focused on maximising efficiency and carefully managing expenses. I’ve challenged our management team to look at our business processes and identify areas where we can become more efficient, which will translate into more profit flowing to the bottom line,” Wehby told shareholders during the meeting.

“Overall, we are off to a positive start in 2024 and will continue to focus on strong execution of our strategy,” he added.