The GraceKennedy Foundation (GKF) hosted its 34^th annual lecture titled A Century of Excellence; GraceKennedy’s Recipe for Success, yesterday (October 20) at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston.

This year’s lecture in part looked at GraceKennedy’s 100-year history, highlighting the accomplishments and challenges the company has faced over the years.

Caroline Mahfood, chief executive officer of GKF, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, noted: “GraceKennedy’s 100th anniversary is a milestone that is very rare in business, and it has provided an opportunity for much reflection and discussion. People are curious about what contributed to GraceKennedy’s longevity and growth over a century.”

The event saw a panel of three distinguished GraceKennedy stalwarts exploring different aspects of GraceKennedy’s history from 1922 to 2022.

Dr Fred Kennedy, chairman, GraceKennedy Foundation; Douglas Orane; retired chairman and CEO, GraceKennedy Ltd; and Senator Don Wehby, Group CEO, GraceKennedy Ltd, were the men tasked with presenting at the 34th lecture.

Kennedy, grandson of one of GraceKennedy’s founders, in his lecture vividly discussed the period of the company’s history when it was a family-owned business in the early days.

In the course of his presentation, Kennedy spoke of the days when the company was managed first by his grandfather and then by his father, Luis Fred Kennedy and James Moss-Solomon Sr, who were then succeeded by Carlton Alexander and Rafael Diaz.

GraceKennedy remains one of the most successful companies in Jamaica, partly because of the strong and devoted leaders that are selected.  

Orane took over from Diaz and assumed leadership of GraceKennedy in the 1990s.

Throughout his address, he discussed the achievements and challenges of the evolution of a family-owned company into a publicly traded, global business, during the particularly difficult era of globalisation and the increasing competitiveness of free trade.

“In the turmoil of the 1990s, what we discovered is that we couldn’t live this way because our standard of living as a people was going nowhere it was actually declining due to massive inflation,” Orane shared during his address.

It was out of this that the genesis of the 2020 vision was formed and, with the 2020 vision, the company identified goals that were to be achieved by the year 2020.  

“There are certain things we did that made it work, one of which was to increase the standard of living for GraceKennedy workers and also the wider society,” Orane shared.

During his presentation, he described in-depth four unique characteristics that were used to help the company last 100 years.

“What makes companies last a 100 years? We did some research and, in our opinion, four unique characteristics that will help any company last up to a 100 years, these longevity characteristics are: sustaining our values, building a strong core, innovation and effective leadership succession,” the former CEO revealed.

A century later and GraceKennedy is still going strong, the winner of several prestigious awards over the years – the group continues to strive for excellence.

Wehby ,during his TedX talk-inspired presentation discussed the expansion of the Group in the 21st Century and gave a peek into GraceKennedy’s vision for the future.

Wehby echoed the sentiments shared by Orane, throughout his speech, that GraceKennedy is built on three main pillars.

“Honesty, integrity and trust have become a part of our DNA. These are the pillars that GraceKennedy operates on,” Wehby stated.

He continued: “We have been growing our Grace Foods brand. There are 5,000 Walmart stores in the USA. GraceKennedy is in only 300. We are very focused about growing the GraceKennedy brand in the Walmart stores.”

He highlighted that as the company looks to the future, the growth of the Grace Brand and Grace-owned brands in and outside of Jamaica is at the forefront of the company’s plans.

Wehby ended is address saying that “the best is yet to come”.