A year after setting up shop in the neighbouring Caribbean island, Donald Patterson, vice-president of accounting and information system at the Jamaica Broilers Group, said he expects "great things" from the earthquake-ravaged country.

Mr Patterson was a guest on the Jamaica Observer's weekly Monday Exchange. He was speaking about the forays the company is making in the region.

"Back in 2010 we started out on a joint venture arrangement with Haiti where we would simply send down feed from Jamaica and we would send down chicks from the US," said Mr Patterson, describing the venture, initially done through the company's main distributors, as a fact-finding mission.

In under a year, he said, the mission proved fruitful, outweighing the company's operation in Jamaica where it started in the 1950s.

"We actually set up processing facilities where we now have a hatchery where we produce the baby chicks in Haiti; we have a feed mill, where we produce feed for layer birds and for broiler ration. We also have a farm where we grow out layer pullets", said Mr Patterson. "We sell some of those to the external customers, we transfer some of them to an external farm, and we also grow out some broiler birds which then go to the factory where we have now built a small processing plant. We also sell chilled or frozen birds in Haiti.

"So the range of things that we do over there is actually a little more than what we do in Jamaica. In Jamaica we sell the layer birds but we don't actually produce eggs for ourselves. So to that extent it is a little bit more in terms of the poultry operations," he said.