The Mission of Canco Limited is to make life easier for our foreign and local customers by processing exotic Jamaican fruits and vegetables thus making them available on a year round basis. We do so with a commitment to safety, high quality, efficiency, protection of the environment and profitability in order to satisfy our customers, employees, share holders, community and country.
In 2006, Canco experienced a setback in our development plans, when we were challenged in the US by one of over twenty companies using the Country Choice brand name in that country. This led to a corporate rebranding exercise, which resulted in the birth of the Linstead Market Jamaica® brand.
Canco’s processing operation is located in a serene picturesque valley surrounded by cool verdant hills, in the small rural community of Seaforth, in the parish of St. Thomas. This agriculturally rich area is home to many indigenous tropical fruit orchards and vegetable farms. A prime location, it gives Canco direct access to the “pick of the crop” for the freshest and unblemished, in-season fruits and vegetables, which are supplied daily by farmers to our plant for processing into our products.
The operation started in 1986, initially on a five-year contract as an exclusive packager of ackees and other vegetables for a major export house. Then, in 1992, we began manufacturing under our own brand, Country Choice. Over the next eight years, we concentrated all our efforts on perfecting our core products: canned Ackees, Calaloo and Breadfruit Slices, to achieve quality levels that earned Canco’s Country Choice products international recognition and respect in the United States, Canada, and UK for providing products with consistent quality and taste.
Having established a solid set of core products, the Company sought to expand into new products and markets, and in 2000, Canco was one of the first four companies in Jamaica selected to work with the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) to develop, test and implement the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) system for canned Ackees. The successful implementation of HACCP made Canco, one of the first two companies to legally gain access to the US market for our main product, canned Ackees. The HACCP system is now the backbone of our plant safety assurance and is being maintained under the strictest control. This assures our markets of the safest and freshest processing, canning and packaging methods for Ackees.