flag-bearer of a true St. Lucian brand name. It set ‘Excellence and Innovation’ as its code words in pursuit of expansion beyond the island’s borders. The Vieux Fort based company chalked-up several ‘firsts’ while growing and expanding by leaps and bounds from year to year, setting local and regional records in the process. Its products started winning awards and the company increasingly gained special mentions - at home and abroad. Baron’s record of achievement in quality and product excellence is quite enviable. It was the first Caribbean manufacturer to receive ISO 22000:2005 certification in 2008; this year the company also became the first to gain FSSC 22000:2010 certification; and the healthiness of all its products are HACCP certified – all three top marks coming from internationally reputable standards and quality institutions. Baron Foods also earlier this year won six of seven top awards at the St. Lucia Manufacturers Association (SMA) Quality Awards ceremony, for everything from Innovation, Leadership and Customer Service to Corporate Social Responsibility,
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Implementation of Best Practice Standards and Human Resource Management. The company’s story may make pleasant reading, but it wasn’t all just a free and easy business joyride these past twenty-one years for Baron Foods. It has gone through the trials and tribulations of every other local company. However, what has kept it steadily going and growing has been the dogged determination of the founder and Managing Director, who has steered the company’s course and maintained his focus, through thick and thin, for the entire journey to date. Another winning element of Baron Foods’ success and excellence has been its firm embrace of quality and standards, marketing and export. Baron Foods is today a household name and a flagship for quality local products. All its “Made in St. Lucia” labels on each of its products sport not one, but two St. Lucia flags – a fact St. Lucians at home are very proud of and which those in the Diaspora are even more proud to exhibit. Indeed, for many, it’s a perfect gift item to relatives and close friends, here and elsewhere. Baron is increasingly becoming a regional player, both as a manufacturer and in terms of its products. The large range now graces more OECS supermarket shelves having recently expanded into Grenada, where its hot and spicy condiments adorn tables in the Spice Isle. The company has also long had a distribution presence in the enormously spicy Guyana market; and now Ramjattan has both eyes and feet set and moving on establishing a presence in the even bigger condiment market of Trinidad & Tobago. Over the years, the company has developed an integrated and rewarding alliance with the local farming community. It depends entirely on fresh produce from local farmers who plant and deliver according to quality and quantities demanded by its high standards. The island’s largest and best known condiment manufacturer has also developed a highly skilled and dependable workforce at its ever-expanding Vieux Fort plant along the St. Jude Highway. The spacious but also very neat plant is easily voted (by most who’ve been there) as the most aesthetically clean and healthy