Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

In this March 2005 file photo, head of Mainland International, Jeffrey Myrie, goes through paperwork at his office at March Pen Road in St Catherine. - File

Jeffrey Myrie, one of the owners of Mainland Inter-national Limited, is looking for buyers for hardware company's 'Super Home Centre' store which sits on the periphery of Spanish Town in St Catherine.

Mainland wants at least US$6 million for the property that it spent more than US$14 million building six years ago.

The 87,000-square-foot store sits on 4.079 acres of land.

"It's a store that was not profitable," said Myrie.

He told the Financial Gleaner that the sale was confined to that store, and was in no way to be read as an attempt to offload Mainland, the business.

The funds raised, he added, are meant to finance another operation.

"We are seeking another location - not in the Spanish Town area," added Myrie, saying crime in the March Pen and Spanish Town areas was a deterrent to business.

Myrie's insistence that Mainland would continue operating as a going concern follows a failed attempt to sell the hardware outfit to Cash Plus Limited, a company now in receivership.

Prior to its collapse, Cash Plus, in published accounts, declared that it still owed US$19.5 million (approximately J$1.4 billion) on the Mainland acquisition to be paid in tranches.

It valued the assets of the business at a net $700 million on its balance sheet, about half of what it would pay to complete the deal.

The Mainland deal, however, was said to have a rider that would return the company to the owners, if Cash Plus defaulted on payments.

The Financial Gleaner understands that proceeds from that sale were earmarked for a cement factory that the Mainland principals had touted for several years as their next big project, to be built in Spanish Town.

At one point, since its 1999 opening in Jamaica, Mainland had laid claim to 14 per cent of the local cement distribution market.

Myrie said he was now looking for another location to set up his cement factory.

He had been denied permission to set up in Spanish Town, he said.

"The factory is mobile. We just need to get the land and assemble it," he said.

Mainland International had opened its retail superstore in 2002 at a cost of US$14 million.

The company has six stores throughout Jamaica, including Martin Street in the heart of Spanish Town; Stony Hill in St Andrew; Mandeville, Manchester; Montego Bay, St James; and at Hagley Park Road in Kingston.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com