26 July 2015 - Business View Caribbean
Barbados Dairy Industries Limited – Pine Hill Dairy
The island’s only dairy processor looks ahead to its second half-century
Barbados, in the eastern Caribbean, is an island na-
tion within the British Commonwealth that achieved its
independence in 1966. A relatively small island with a
population of approximately 282,000, 90 percent of
whom are of Afro-Caribbean descent, the economy of
Barbados was based almost entirely on sugar cultiva-
tion and related activities up until the end of the co-
lonial period. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s,
however, many former sugar plantations have been
turned into industrial sites, as the country began diver-
sifying its economy into manufacturing and tourism.
Also founded in 1966, as a joint project between the
Northern Dairies of England, the New Zealand Dairy
Board, a private enterprise in Barbados, and the Gov-
ernment of Barbados, was Barbados Dairy Industries
Limited, which, today, does business under the name
of Pine Hill Dairy (PHD). Built on the site of a former
sugar plantation, Pine Hill Dairy is Barbados’ only dairy
processing plant. In its earliest days, its first suppliers
were local, family farms from in and around the city of
Bridgetown. Twice daily, about 3000 liters of milk was
transported to the company for processing in trucks,
