Derrimon Trading moving towards digital check out at retail shops
Published:Thursday | March 1, 2018 | 12:00 AM
Derrimon Trading Limited is upgrading its software to allow shoppers to scan items in store as part of a step towards digital checkouts, according to Chairman and CEO Derrick Cotterell.
He cautioned that it will take at least a year to implement.
"We are looking at software and upgrading software used in both US and Japan, to give us the capabilities when the products are available. So by 2019,
we should have implementation of that," said Cotterell on Wednesday, as the featured speaker at the monthly Mayberry Investors Forum, in response to similar developments in various markets.
Shoppers at Tesco in the United Kingdom, for example, can scan items as they shop. When finished, they do not unpack but 'pay and go' at a designated area. Amazon also began testing digital checkout at its food business in the United States earlier this year.
Derrimon operates eight retail stores, comprising seven Sampars and one Select Grocers.
Explaining some of the challenges his stores would face in going digital, Cotterell said the QR barcodes of many items distributed locally are are written for Latin American markets, and do not digitally translate to their equivalent in North America, where the technology would be acquired.
"In terms of using your smartphone to scan stuff, a lot of that is a function of the supplies. A lot of our supplies in Jamaica are for the Latin American trade and not for North America," he said.
He indicated that while shoppers will see new technological options in 2019, it was unlikely, although a "possibility", that the cashless checkout option would be available to them at that point.
Also at the forum, Cotterell who, through Derrimon, also controls the listed fragrance company, Caribbean Flavours & Fragrances (CFF), announced plans to consider increasing liquidity of the stock, but offered no signal as to the options under consideration.
"I think we will speak to our financial adviser about what we can do to make the stock more liquid," said Cotterell, who is also managing director of the fragrance operation.
Derrimon Trading holds two-thirds of the 89.2 million CFF shares. Ownership of the stock is mostly concentrated in the hands of the top 10 shareholders, who together hold 92.8 per cent of all shares. Six of the top 10 are institutions or companies that are unlikely to freely trade their shares, making for a thinly traded or illiquid stock.
One of the preferred options to improve liquidity, employed by junior market companies in recent years, has been stock splits. But Cotterell refused to comment on whether CFF would also go that route, reiterating only that he would be consulting first with advisers.
Caribbean Flavours is the Caribbean representative for IFF, a leading global flavour house.
Currently, 80 per cent of CFF revenues come from its flavours, most of which are supplied to beverage and ice cream manufacturers. Most of the rest is generated by fragrances supplied to companies that, for instance, make home-cleaning items. The company also recently added extracts as a third revenue stream.
Sales at Caribbean Flavours inched up to $114.67 million for the second quarter ending December 2017, from $110.7 million a year earlier. Net profit rose to $24.5 million from $22.6 million in the same period.
The bulk of Caribbean Flavours' sales are in Jamaica, but the company wants to improve its exports. It currently sells to Guyana, but remains bullish on expanding into Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.