The older son had big dreams but no money. The father had retired with a good pension and decades of experience in manufacturing.
The combination gave rise to Shavuot Farms, a name that would be unrecognisable to most Jamaicans, but a company already blazing a trail in manufacturing for export, after just five years in business.
The 120-acre farm run by father and CEO Richard Harris and his two sons, Joel and Jordan Harris, is now a fully integrated agricultural and agro-processing enterprise called Shavuot International Holdings Limited, the parent company for Shavuot Farms, in the business of producing teas and castor oil.
The Harrises started the company in 2013 and by 2014 they were into manufacturing.
“We started with the farm and that allowed us to set up the raw material base. We were totally immersed in that operation producing a range of crops, and we got a lot of help from the linkages that we made,” the CEO said, referring to arrangements with contract farmers in areas such as Lionel Town, Linstead, Ewarton, Race Course, St Thomas, and parts of western Jamaica.
Shavuot Farms produces a range of exotic teas using the leaves and seeds of the moringa plant, turmeric, cerassee, cinnamon, ginger, and combinations of those products, as well as high-value Jamaican black castor oil. Its products are sold under the brand name Shavuot.
Harris says his son Joel, armed with a major in marketing and a minor in entrepreneurship, was determined to set up a business and make money – but he had no backers.
The senior Harris was headed to retirement after decades as an opera-tions expert, with a track record spanning some top Jamaican companies – ICD Group and WIHCON, Serge Island, P.A. Benjamin, and Butterkist. His last role leading to retirement was a 14-year stretch at Jamaica Broilers as senior manager of operations.
But once Joel broached the idea of setting up their own business, his “semi-retired” father offered immediate support.
“He’d asked me to think of an idea of how we can convert our raw produce from the farm into value-added products, and that’s how Shavuot International was formed,” Joel chimed in.
“I selected the products, developed the tea range and the packaging, worked on how the company would be organised, and worked on the markets. He brought in his skill with operations, blended with my skill as a marketer, and here we are right now – Shavuot International – a strong family company,” he said.
Shavuot is the name of one of the three Jewish pilgrimage festivals, which for the company means ‘harvesting goodness’.
As testament to its impact, Shavuot hosted a tour of its Spanish Town factory by officials of the Jamaica Manufacturers an Exporters’ Association, the Government, and IMF Representative to Jamaica Constant Lonkeng Ngouana on Tuesday, but Harris was not prepared to disclose information on the company’s financial performance.
He did say the company was holding its own, but that his own assessment of its real value was the business experience it afforded his sons – Joel, who has the role of marketing director, and younger sibling Jordan, who recently joined the team fresh out of college to head up local promotion and sales.
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