Steven Miller, general manager of Good Year Jamaica, pitches the Good Year Wrangler tyre in this July 16, 2007 Gleaner photo, in Kingston. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Goodyear Jamaica, which last week named Tropical Battery as the new marketer and distributor of Goodyear tyres here, says the move will free the Jamaica operation to ramp up oversight of all its business in the Caribbean.

"We will have a role as an administrative arm for the Caribbean to ensure our outlets have the supply needed across the Caribbean and to bring best practices across the region," Steven Miller, the general manager of Goodyear Jamaica, told Wednesday Business in a telephone interview.

Subsidiary

Jamaica is the only country in the English-speaking Caribbean where Goodyear International, an American Fortune 500 company, maintained a subsidiary.

But in the mid-1990s Goodyear, saying that production here had become uneconomic, closed its factory in eastern Jamaica, requiring to local company only to oversee the importation, marketing and sale of its tyres.

Goodyear used a Jamaican company, Tyre Sales Ltd, as its local distributor, but Miller explained that the relationship was qualitatively different from the one with Tropical Battery, which came into effect on September 1.

Tyre Sales has given up the distributor more than a year after fire gutted its warehouse in Kingston.

Not clear

None of the companies have said whether the fire and Tyre Sales' subsequent search for new facilities influenced the ending of their partnership, nor is it clear what the Tyre Sales' remaining operations entail.

Essentially, the company provided warehousing, distribution fleet and collection services, but, according to Miller, "Under that arrangement Goodyear still owned the relationship with its customers."

Tropical Battery is now a full-fledged distributor of Goodyear tyres, involved in marketing, direct sales, logistics and developing the customer base.

"We sell product to Tropical Battery as a wholesaler and Tropical sells as a distributor and retailer," Miller said.

The upshot: Goodyear Jamaica is freed to concentrate on developing the company's business in the rest in the English, Dutch and French Caribbean, covering 20 territories, which import tyres from Goodyear subsidiaries around the world.

The Jamaican operation has long had oversight of the Caribbean markets, but that relationship is been deepened, Goodyear officials in Kingston explained.

Goodyear Jamaica's turnover last year was J$596 million (US$8.5 million), half of which came from its sales in the domestic market. It also on-sold tyres to other Caribbean markets.

Biggest supplier

Miller declined to give specific projections, but he expected the relationship with Tropical Battery 0to increase Goodyear's holding in a market where it is already the biggest supplier of tyres.

"Tropical Battery will immediately add value to our existing customers," Miller said. "They have fantastic distribution skills and the fact they sell a wide variety of products; they are very marketing savvy."

Marc Melville, Tropical Battery declined to comment on the impact the Goodyear dealership will have on his company's operation or what is being done to accommodate the arrangement.

Miller said however that Tropical Battery would likely have to build out additional warehousing space to accommodate the new business.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com.