Salada negotiating sale of spice maker Pimora
Published:Sunday | February 3, 2019 | 12:00 AMSteven Jackson/Senior Business Reporter
Coffee processor Salada Foods Jamaica Limited is offloading its spice company, which sold compressed pimento leaves to flavour the fire for jerk meats but has been idle since 2017.
Salada owns 70 per cent of Pimora Company Limited, whose net assets are valued at some $18 million.
“We are actively searching for a buyer. We have been in talks with someone and we are hoping to have the assets sold this year,” Salada General Manager Dianna Blake Bennett told the Financial Gleaner on Thursday.
Salada acquired majority stake in the company for $26 million in 2014, three years after the company launched into business. At the time, the shareholders included Vitus Evans, Clive Myrie and Coralgene Myrie.
The coffee company launched an awareness campaign advocating for the use of the pimora product as a flavour enhancer to be used alongside coal in grill fires. The smouldering pimento would fuse the smoke into the meats.
Salada ceased making pimora in financial year 2017 and offered the assets for sale at that time. The coffee processor booked a $10.5 million write down for Pimora Company that year. In its 2018 financial year, Salada reported that the closure caused a further impairment of the assets, and booked a net loss of $6.5 million for the Pimora operation.
Under Blake-Bennett’s leadership – she was appointed as head of the company two years ago – Salada is currently focused on growing markets for its core operation.
Last year, the company launched Mountain Bliss 876 coffee product targeted at younger drinkers.
The new product and other marketing activities pushed selling and promotional expenses up to $45 million from $32.77 million a year earlier, but it also gave Salada sufficient juice to hit its long-anticipated milestone of $1 billion of sales, while operating profits tripled from $80 million to $270 million in the year ending September 2018.
The company, which produces under the popular Jamaica Mountain Peak brand, also made gains from its distribution arrangements and export markets. Newer markets such as Canada and Barbados were up 440 per cent and 220 per cent, respectively.