From Walkerswood to the world: since we last wrote about Walkerswood, Jamaica, in 1994, its cottage industry has burgeoned into a company with a 2 million (pounds) turnover ...

The shopper in New York, London or Johannesburg who picks a brightly-labelled bottle of Walkerswood jerk sauce off the supermarket shelf has little idea of the story which lies behind it.

Walkerswood sauces and seasonings are produced by a remarkable company based in a remarkable village in Jamaica. Set in the hills above the north coast resort of Ocho Rios, the village has a tradition of community action and self-help which dates back to the 1940s (see For A Change April 1988 and August/September 1994).

Walkerswood Caribbean Foods can trace its roots to a two-person operation, grilling marinated pork for local bars. From the start its aim was to create local employment, and so discourage people from leaving the village for the city. It started exporting jerk seasoning through an American tourist who picked up a bottle in an Ocho Rios supermarket and wanted more. Today, some 23 years on, the company employs 60 people and its 15 hot sauces, exported around the world, bring it an annual turnover of [pounds sterling] 2 million plus.

The company is proud of the fact that wherever possible it uses raw materials produced in Jamaica. `Our jerk sauce, for example, is probably 98 per cent Jamaican,' production manager Johnny McFarlane told The Times Higher Education Supplement in May 2000. `What isn't Jamaican is the bottle cap and the nutmeg.'

Originally all the company's suppliers were local farmers. In 1997-8 the area was hit by drought and the price of escallion, a form of spring onion which is a basic ingredient of the sauces, rocketed from J$5 a pound to J$100. `We had to continue to supply the market and take all these losses,' says the managing director, Woody Mitchell. `One of our competitors decided not to continue to export and lost its market to Costa Rica.'

The company weathered the crisis and, thanks to the way its staff rallied round, managed to raise productivity by 60 per cent. In 1998, so as to spread its risk, it set up its own farm in the south of the island and entered into an arrangement with a large farm in St Mary, to the east of Walkerswood. But they continue to buy produce from some 100 local farms, some of them very small.

When the company celebrated its 21st birthday in 1999, the guest speaker was Jamaican economist Norman Girvan, whose parents helped to set up the original `Pioneer Club', from which the village's self-help initiatives stemmed. The teamwork which ensued between the villagers and the local landowning family testified, said Girvan, to `the critical role of religious faith in bridging the gap between the materially privileged and the materially less privileged'.

The deeper spiritual and human values which motivated Walkerswood's pioneers live on in the ethos of the company. `The Walkerswood team speak of the strong bonds of faith in God that unite them,' Girvan said. `They speak of constant communication--talking through problems of human relations, of debt and drought as they arise. They speak of a constant effort at meditation, reflection, self-criticism and seeking guidance from above. They speak of the importance of community rootedness, of partnership and of equity.'

The company is owned by 12 partners, mostly from the community, and none of them owning more than 17.5 per cent of the shares. It has 23 shareholders, and has just opened up the opportunity to buy shares to employees of five years' standing.

Walkerswood's spiritual roots help when it comes to the hard graft of building teamwork between the partners, says their chairman, Roddy Edwards. `There's a continual need to talk honestly, not to sweep things under the carpet, and to admit one's mistakes,' he says. `When people are prepared to talk openly about such issues as jealousy, we can come to new unity.'

When the Prince of Wales visited the factory last year, his spokeswoman said, `It's a good example of local people getting together and proving very successful in an area where people find it hard to make a living.'

And what of the future? Walkerswood Caribbean Foods has just published a cookbook(*) to show customers overseas what to do with the spices and sauces it supplies, and, says Mitchell, plans to add a new pepper sauce to its repertoire this year.

Its most ambitious plan is to build a new processing facility which, when fully operational, will raise productivity `at least four-fold' and increase employment correspondingly. The hope, says Mitchell, is to break the ground this year and complete construction over the next two years. `We are excited by the possibilities,' he says. `We continue to live the dream that started from a small seed years ago.'

(*) `Walkerswood Caribbean kitchen' by Virginia Burke, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, London, [pounds sterling] 7.99 (US price, $12.00)