Susan Gordon, Staff Reporter
Rorbert Lightbourne, Minister of Trade and Industry in 1960, presses a button to start the machinery going at Antilles Chemical Company in 1960. The opening ceremony took place at the plant site, Marcus Garvey Drive, in Kingston. - FILE
THE UNITED States finance company, General Electric Capital, has placed in receivership the Jamaican fertiliser manufacturer, Antilles Chemical Company, hoping to recoup millions of dollars it loaned to Antilles' parent, Steel Partners Limited, for their businesses in Jamaica and Puerto Rico.
Advertisements have recently appeared in the press advising creditors and customers of Antilles of the receivership, and the company's president Patrick Rose has confirmed that its owners have lost control of the firm.
"It's gone," Rose told Wednesday Business. " The bank has taken it."
"General Electric has been extending the loan agreement but Steel Partners lost interest after the hurricane and flood rains that damaged our business," Rose explained.
It was not immediately clear the extent of General Electric's exposure to Steel Partners, which acquired Antilles and the Puerto Rico-based Ochoa Fertiliser Company, five years ago from Caribbean Fertiliser Group.
Antilles supplies fertilisers and insecticides to local sugarcane, banana, cocoa and the pineapple industries and reported annual sales of $784 million. The plant, which employs 60 people, has a capacity of 160,000 tonnes a year.
But it has run into financial problems in recent years, especially since the disruption of agriculture in the last two hurricane seasons, and Rose suggested that Steel Partners lost interest, failing to pump the required capital into the business.
With the firm failing to meet its debt commitments, General Electric Capital last month sent in local auditor Ken Tomlinson of the firm Business Recovery Services as receivers. According to Rose, the Puerto Rico operation is also in trouble.
Ironically, the land on which Antilles Chemical sits is also sought-after but by local owners Petrojam.
Antilles holds the remainder of a 100-year lease on the Petrojam-owned real estate, that expires in 2069. The govern-ment-owned oil refinery would now like to get it back.
"Petrojam Limited is desperately searching for land to expand, and is bidding to get the place," said Rose.
