Derrimon weathers sales slowdown in Q2, US operations back in business
Published:Wednesday | August 27, 2025 | 12:05 AM
Derrimon Trading Company Limited’s profit surged seventy per cent in the April-June quarter relative to the 2024 period but the company’s leader is not inclined to celebrate just yet.
“Last year was a bad year, so that’s not our base,” CEO Ian Kelly explained.
“We want to see how we performed in 2023 and use that as our benchmark to improve. Indeed, we saw some improvement over a bad year, but that’s not what we would have set as our benchmark,” he said.
For the three-month period ended June 2025, Derrimon Group’s revenue dipped by just under one per cent from $4.25 billion to $4.21 billion, with both the distribution and retail operations showing declines in volumes and sales. Profit climbed from $62.6 million to $106.4 million in the April-June quarter.
Over six months, revenue rose nine per cent to $8.5 billion, while half-year profit was 35 per cent higher, having climbed from $121 million to $163 million.
The company cited cautious consumer spending for the dip in sales in the June second quarter.
“It’s a really bad economy,” said Kelly. “When you look throughout the market … you see consumer spending down. So it is not just us alone having that issue. But we are pushing. We are pushing in the distribution business, we are pushing in retail,” Kelly said.
Regarding the company’s New York-based businesses, Marnock LLC and Marnock Retail LLC, operating as Good Food for Less and FoodSaver New York, Kelly said their rebranding as Sampars New York is now complete.
The supermarkets are back in business after repairs to fix flood damage – one in late November 2024 and the other on August 14 of this year – but operating at about 40 to 50 per cent in terms of customer traffic and volume sales, he said.
To build up market share, Sampars New York is trying to reconnect with the African community along with the Caribbean diaspora that is a large part of the clientèle.
“The issue is to get back to them to let them know that we are open. We also have to ensure that the service and operation is of the standard that when they come here, they will continue to come here. We have to do whatever it takes for us to pull back the traffic,” said Kelly.
Staff is working the phones to alert customers, especially the large, wholesale customers, that Sampars is back in business.
After acquiring the New York operations in early 2021 for a reported US$9 million, the operation had to be shut down after flood damage caused by a collapsed roof.
Derrimon has filed an insurance claim, but Kelly said the full cost of the damage is still being tabulated by loss adjusters prior to payout.
“We really have to be very mindful of putting out numbers here. What we’re seeing is a pretty sum. It’s a combination of repairs, consequential losses, and it is in US dollars,” he said.
The annual loss of revenue was between US$30 million and $40 million, he noted. At current exchange rates, those figures translate to around $4.8 billion to $6.4 billion in Jamaican currency.
“We really lost about $4 billion-plus in revenue, and that was giving us a very good margin. You can, therefore, understand the impact that it had on the group,” Kelly said.