Facey vows to rebound after billion-dollar fire guts complex

Source: Jamaica Gleaner

As a raging fire swept through the Newport West warehouse and offices of Seprod on Saturday night, CEO Richard Pandohie said he parked his car in front of the Facey Pharmaceutical Division of the manufacturing and distribution conglomerate.

He said it was a real, if not symbolic, attempt to prevent another important part of the hulking J$46.27-billion conglomerate from going up in flames.

“That fire would have to pass me,” Pandohie quipped.

But beneath the stoic smile, Pandohie and his executives will have a headache evaluating the knock-on effects of the preliminary loss estimate of $1 billion and climbing. That sum, he said, did not include equipment or the 95,000 square feet of warehousing space.

“That’s just on goods that were there. They’re still doing cooling-down operations, so nobody has been able to go in and do a complete assessment,” the CEO told The Gleaner in an interview on Sunday.

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