J. Wray and Nephew, Jamaica’s oldest company, announced recently that its CEO Jean-Philippe Beyer is stepping down from the role and will transition into becoming chairman starting today, September 1, 2024, capping 30 years in an executive role with Italy’s Gruppo Campari, the last eight of which were spent turning around the Jamaican business.

Beyer, who hails from France and recently acquired Jamaican citizenship with plans to retire in Jamaica, departs J. Wray and Nephew with Daniel Caron — headhunted from Nestlé Jamaica — to replace him.

For Beyer — who remains as enthused about the job on his last day as he was when he was first tapped by Gruppo Campari in 2016 to lead a turnaround in the business it acquired in 2012 from Trinidad-based CL Financial Group for around US$500 million — “it was all fun”. Gruppo Campari acquired the brand for its Appleton line of rums because it wanted a premium rum amongst its products and wanted to build it into one of the most recognised rum brands in the world. CL Financial itself had only acquired Lascelles deMercado four years before in 2008.

“When the opportunity came and they said: ‘JP [Jean-Phillipe], are you interested in going to Jamaica?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ I mean, I already knew what Jamaica was and I rediscovered it when I came, and I am going to retire here,” Beyer told the Jamaica Observer in an exclusive interview last week, ahead of him stepping down from his CEO role.

“We have done a lot of very difficult things. We have changed the business radically, we’ve been very successful — and when I say ‘we’, I mean the team — and we have done that despite a lot of challenges, a lot of pressure, and we have done that having fun.”

The difficult things Bayer led the team in doing has change the fortunes at J Wray and Nephew. At the time Beyer arrived in Jamaica, he was coming from leading a turnaround in Campari’s Mexico business.

In Jamaica he found a business that in 2016 had a complex supply chain, one of the highest headcounts in the Gruppo Campari, a very mature alcohol market with little room for growth, and a very complex export business covering 36 different markets with 58 third-party distributors.

“At the time, we were making some money but barely, and it was the biggest and most complicated company in the Campari Group,” Beyer noted.

Revenues in 2016 were recorded at €78.9 million ($10.64 billion). Even though the COVID-19 pandemic impacted growth, by 2023 — the last full year for which financials are available — that revenue showed some recovery and was more than triple its 2016 outturn, to reach €182.5 million ($31.14 billion). At the same time, profits also moved up to €60.3 million ($9.78 billion) by 2022. How the company’s bottom line performed in 2023 will come out in Gruppo Campari’s 2024 annual report.

Beyer said he led the turnaround by doing simple things.

“When we bought Lascelles deMercado it was made up of a lot of different companies doing a lot of different things, not necessarily all in the liquor business, and the decision was taken that we would focus on spirits and we would get rid of everything else. And when I came in I went further and said, ‘Okay, within the portfolio we had about 30 brands, that’s too many,’ and I set about getting rid of them,” Beyer told Sunday Finance.

He said he met some resistance in the doing away with some of the brands, but outlined that their small profit margins, and sometimes losses, meant it made financial sense to do so.

“I said, ‘Let’s focus on four or five brands,’ and we focused on J. Wray and Nephew, JB rum, Appleton Estate, Magnum, and Kingston 62.” Kingston 62 is the Appleton Special rum that was renamed in the new focus. With this reduced portfolio, J Wray and Nephew dedicated 95 per cent of its advertising and promotions budget to pushing the brands and the company’s sales are now amongst the most in any country in the Gruppo Campari.

“We became the fourth-biggest business unit in the Campari Group today,” Beyer said. He pointed out that only Campari USA – the most valuable alcohol market in the world — Campari Italy, where the parent company is based; and Campari Germany outsell J. Wray and Nephew in Gruppo Campari. That, he boasts, is much more than the company makes from its other businesses in much bigger countries such as France, Canada, UK and Australia, which have larger and much wealthier populations.

“That is mind-blowing, if you think about it, because this is a market with just 2.8 million people. Yes, we have exports, but exports is 15 per cent of the total business so most of the sales are here in Jamaica — so that is testament to how the team here has transformed the business,” Beyer added as he pointed out that most of the sales are in Jamaica, though there are some exports of its white overproof rum to the Cayman Islands. More than 90 per cent of its white overproof rum brands — J Wray and Nephew and JB rum — are sold in Jamaica. Their sales make up about a third of J. Wray and Nephew’s total revenues. The Campari aperitif, which was once shunned by Jamaicans because of its bitter taste, is now second in sales to white overproof rum in Jamaica.

“We still produce some of the other brands such as Cocomania, some of the creams, and Jamaica Brandy, but those go to the hotels,” he said. Hotels make up about 15 per cent of the company’s sales; “it is not profitable” but is an important market to keep, Bayer acknowledged.

Overall Gruppo Campari, through an acquisition spree that started in the 1990s, is now the sixth-largest player worldwide in the premium spirits industry. It has a global distribution reach, trading in over 190 nations around the world, with leading positions in Europe and the Americas, and specialising in a portfolio of over 50 premium and super premium brands including Aperol, Appleton Estate, Campari, SKYY, Wild Turkey, Grand Marnier, Espolòn, and Courvoisier.

But as he looks back now on his time as Managing Director of Jamaica’s oldest company — J. Wray and Nephew turns 200 next year — he hails the spirit of the Jamaican workers throughout a difficult transition to get the company to where it is now.

“Even when things seem difficult, even when things are stressful or when there are problems, there is always a silver lining somewhere, and at the end we take things pretty seriously but pretty light…which is not always the case where I work,” he said as he used adjectives such as very ambitious and very proud to describe his team and Jamaicans in general.

“My successor is a lucky man because he is inheriting a team that is one of the best in the Campari Group — and I am not trying to be nice by saying this, it is my genuine feeling. I have seen and felt the saying, ‘Wi likkle but wi tallawah,’ and that sums up the Jamaican spirit. I can now say [the phrase sums up] our spirit, now being Jamaican myself.”

Now he goes off to chair the company and also its foundation, and is also head of its pension fund — enough to keep him active as he relocates from Kingston to Montego Bay and will now travel to the former for meetings. Beyer is two years from retirement and is being eased into it by Gruppo Campari after 30 years of tapping him to not only turnaround the Jamaica business, but businesses it built or acquired as well in Greece, Monaco, Africa and Mexico.

But Jamaica, he said, is dearest to his heart.

“It’s been very intense because it is a big company, with a lot of people, with a lot of complexity, and it makes it very interesting. But, it is very rewarding professionally speaking and it is probably the best time I have had in my 30 years in Campari.”

— David Rose contributed to this story