Desmond Blades, chairman of the Musson Jamaica group of companies. - File Photos

Desmond Blades, the 80-year-old chairman of Musson Jamaica Limited, no longer makes the daily trek into office, but he remains just as engaged with the company whose intricate network he has left up to family members to run.

From his home in the hills above Kingston, Blades has more time to strategise. He has concluded that Mussons is just not big enough.

He's just not satisfied with the close to 60 subsidiaries and associated companies in the family-owned group whose operations span 21 countries, including the United States, Ireland, Fiji and New Zealand.

Having built the private empire out of the 140-year-old SP Musson and Son Limited, Blades now spends a lot of time at home recovering from major surgery and strategising on plans to expand the business into hardware, construction supplies and property development.

SP Musson was a Barbados-based, trans-Caribbean manufacturer's agent that, in the 1950s, simply took orders of food and dry goods on a commission basis for British and American companies that, in turn, shipped directly to the customers.

Eyeing new ventures

Blades, on whom the Government recently conferred Jamaica's fourth highest national honour, the Order of Jamaica, and who is known for his acquisitive business model, says he has set no timeline for breaking into the new areas of entrepreneurship and is not now advancing discussions with any individual or group to buy into the new areas operation.

"Opportunity is the timeline," said the businessman, a recent inductee in the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica's hall of fame, who is characteristically economical with words.

But he let on that he has heard of the challenges being faced by rival conglomerate GraceKennedy's hardware arm, Hardware and Lumber, quipping, "I don't think what they consider a challenge is anything that would cause me great worry."

And while Musson owns the 65-year-old CD Alexander Realty - the real-estate brokerage it bought in 1987 and which is run by David McNulty - Blades concedes that the business does not now possess the right talent to effectively pursue property development, something he thinks the group should get into.

In an exclusive interview with the Financial Gleaner at High Rock, his modest Stony Hill home with a panoramic view of the city, Blades explains: "That is a very personal area. I don't necessarily think that would suit CD Alexander. Property development is like high-powered salesmanship. I think we are not equipped in CD Alexander with what I would call high-powered salesmanship. We would need to have the person to do it."

What drives Desmond Blades' expansionist tendencies and determines what businesses to buy or start?

"Profitability," he declares, plain and simple.

The veteran businessman and iconic manufacturer, who honed his skills, interest and natural aptitude in commerce and management as a young junior cashier at Royal Bank of Canada and a food salesman with commission agents JB Leslie and Company in his native Barbados, as well as on the shop floor of SP Musson and Son, does not share the view that the global recession inhibits firms like his from expansion.

In fact, he is strongly of the view that the recession has had no major impact on business in Jamaica, suggesting that is has been used as cover for many management decisions that should be taken in the normal course of running a business.

"I think the effect on the global situation has been grossly exaggerated."

Blades adds: "Business doesn't run smoothly. It is a series of waves - up and down - it happens all the time. I don't see anything happening today that didn't happen yesterday, that didn't happen the day before."

So, the group is not about to let staff go on account of the economic down-turn.

"Our workers have to survive too," inserts Blades' wife, Peggy, a director of Musson since 1969.

There is no thought of opening up the family-controlled business to public money through stock market listing.

"There was never any serious thought of going public," Blades said. "And even if I had any desires of making it public, my grandson (Musson deputy chair-man and Blades' declared heir Paul Scott) objects strongly."

It appears that Desmond Blades, who still carries out his multiple company chairmanship duties, while his grandson directs the day-to-day activities of the conglomerate, has been a troubleshooter for a long time. He has worked with Musson for 55 years and counting.

The avid sailor says having fallen in love with the beauty of the Kingston harbour, he organised to be sent from his first duty station in Trinidad to turn around SP Musson's loss-making Kingston operation in 1961, having already done the same in Port-of-Spain.

Profitable operations

Seeing the harbour teeming with sail boats, he confesses: "I said to myself, 'God, that looks good', and I set out to make sure that whatever looked good happened."

After arriving here on the eve of Independence in 1961, he not only quickly made SP Musson Jamaica operations profitable, expanding into distribution and manufacturing, but again engineered to take over the company from the vantage point of a 25 per cent ownership he acquired when Musson Jamaica Limited was born in 1962, and share options he exercised along the way as a successful manager.

Blades says he now continues the tradition of attracting and rewarding talent with stock options to buy into Musson, although no formal, structured share ownership plan is in place.

Musson Jamaica was created in the country's Independence year to give a distinctly Jamaican personality to the new business that was emerging after the break-up of the West Indian Federation.

Paul Scott, deputy chairman of Musson Jamaica Limited and heir apparent to grandfather Desmond Blades.

The sell-out from a Barbadian company and its transformation to a wholly Jamaican enterprise started in 1962 and was completed by the end of the 1960s.

The tipping point for Blades' ownership design came in the 1970s, when according to him, a major Musson Jamaica shareholder, Derrick Stone, a prominent lawyer and labour negotiator, was roughed up on the steps of the Supreme Court and decided to pack up and migrate to Canada.

"He then had this bunch of stock options which he didn't want and I bought them from him which gave me the controlling position in the company."

Were Blades' Barbadian bosses willing participants in his march on the company? Not really.

"They didn't want to put in a lot of investment. I put in the investment in Musson Jamaica Limited and consequently demanded the control," Blades said bluntly of his determined approach.

"I think if you could look behind the scenes into the minds of the people, you would have found considerable resistance. I think I tried to organise myself so that when I moved forward, the people who had to move backwards realised that they had no option."

When equity was cheap

Peggy Blades said her husband, having built up the company in the 1960s, when equity was relatively cheap, finally bought it out when the shares became more expensive in the 1970s.

Under Blades' direction, Musson's first distributive business was that of importing and selling flour from Haiti. That went very well, according to the Blades, who also did the importation and sale of other staples such as rice and corned beef.

The bumper profits from the lucrative flour trade came to an end when the Jamaica Flour Mills was built in 1972 and the government put the squeeze on import licences for the product, forcing distributors to do business with the Jamaican producer.

Blades sees much similarity between that episode and the current crusade by Caribbean Cement Company to have government curb cement imports, but would not be drawn into commenting on the issue.

From the early days of selling flour and Musson's first manufacturing business of making pilfer proof bottle caps for the rum industry through West Indies Metal Products under a monopoly arrangement, the company has expanded into cosmetics, insurance, investments, marketing, mer-chandise, packaging, photo-graphy, real estate, shipping, technology and telecommunications.

When, according to the Musson boss, the powerful rum interest persuaded the government that protection was bad for the industry, profitability decline set in after some 15 years of very good profits.

Musson's next manufacturing venture was Caribbean Bitumuls Jamaica Limited, producing asphalt emulsion for road building and repairs with raw materials brought in through the Rio Bueno pier in Trelawny, now redeveloped into a cement importing and bagging plant by the Chris Bicknell-led Tank-Weld group.

Falling decline for the product soon hit the company. Caribbean Milling Jamaica Limited followed, producing animal feeds of all types, with a foreign partner.

Along the way, Musson acquired the Lannaman confectionery plant, built a chemical mixing plant and set up a very successful cosmetic operation producing a full line of Max Factor cosmetics.

It bought a spice factory, a pharmaceutical plant, as well as operations manufacturing plastic bags, paper bags and toilet paper, lines of business it continues today.

Desmond Blades credits Paul his grandson with much of the more recent developments in the group.

"Our grandson has been a great support to me," he says.

He rests a little easier knowing his succession planning is complete with Scott and Blades' granddaughter, Melanie Scott-Subratie firmly entrenched in the business.

Xerox operations

In more recent times Musson has bought the Xerox operations in Jamaica and other countries in the Caribbean, and Central America and is now in Fiji and New Zealand.

It purchased leading distributors T. Geddes Grant (Distributors) Limited and Facey Commodity in association with publicly listed Seprod, which is 45 per cent owned by Musson.

Other operations include Serge Island Dairies, General Accident Insurance Company, Orret Musson Investment, Stanley Motta, Advanced Business Systems, Facey Barbados, Facey Telecoms and Radius Comm-unication Ireland. Radius, which the Musson head says is very profitable, is a leading importer and supplier of telephone instruments representing leading mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericcson, Samsung, Motorola and LG.

"Radius is a special situation. You can't judge it as a normal business because of situations which we don't control," Blades says, but would not be pressed further.

Facey and Xerox are proving to be the driving forces behind Musson's overseas expansion through partnerships.

"The purchase of Facey was a major move," according to Blades, who notes that the company has been a star performing in the group in terms of business turnover and profitability.

Facey's pharmaceutical operations and more recent Valu Drug pharmacies are highlighted as growth areas by Blades.

"It (Facey) is doing extremely well."

Asked the value of the Musson business, Blades said he had never given thought to how much his empire or personal holding is worth.

"If you shot me I would not be able to tell you."

His wife adds that the Musson holdings includes several properties bought by the group to house its directors.

For Desmond Blades, Jamaica has been and continues to be a good place for doing business. He describes business in Barbados as 'self-centred' and commerce-driven Trinidad as being more 'parochial'.

He has useful suggestions for managers. Eliminate the possibility of strikes and work stoppages, he says, by being accessible to workers.

"We have never had a strike at Musson because the workers at every level know that if they have a problem, they can always talk to the boss," Peggy Blades adds.

How long will Desmond Blades continue to be actively involved in directing the affairs of the Musson empire?

"Like marriage, it's till death do us part," he quipped.

huntley.medley@gleanerjm.com

Desmond and Peggy Blades at a party hosted by Robert McMillan at West Kings House Road, St Andrew, January 10.