WITH a small hand mill, and just a few ingredients at this Essequibo Coast house, Roy Singh, in 1996, started a business that would, decades later, dominate the Guyanese market.

With recipe’s passed down from generations, Roy’s Quality Spices, is not your typical agro-processing business; it is a flavourful fusion of history and a love for family bottled in a spice bottle.
Now heading the company, Govinda Singh inherited the rich and authentic taste of Roy’s Quality spices from his father. This newspaper met Singh at the Agri-Investment Forum and Expo at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), where he shared the unique history of a family empire.

“Roy’s Quality Spices is located on the Essequibo; we’ve been doing this business for 26 years…so it started off with my father; we started doing the spice trade and selling the raw spices.”
It all began with a favour to a friend. According to Singh, his father was asked to grind some Garam masala for a friend who was travelling at the time. After receiving rave feedback, Singh’s father decided to start a small business selling raw spices.

“He started grinding the spices by hand mill and then later on he improved with electric mill; so since then to now, we would have developed recipes like the fried rice seasoning and so on but our Garam masala, which is our signature product, is an actual recipe from my grandmother, so that recipe has been passed down from generations.”

Over the years, the Singhs have perfected their recipes, making an array of products to offer the markets.
“We have recently started upgrading our packaging and stuff, but it is not only the lovely packaging, it’s the lovely taste that our products give the food.”

With 67 products available, the Singhs are to expand their product line further to provide spices to cover all the letters in the alphabet.
“We are introducing our new product line which will cover all the spices from A-Z, any spice that you can think about; if you want Annatto we have that, if you want rosemary we have that, himalayan pink salt, we have that, Za’atar we have that.”

EXPANSION ON THE HORIZON
Roy’s Quality Spices is also hoping to tap into other Caribbean markets.
Singh said that investors have already lined up and indicated their interest in his business and want to learn more about what he has to offer the Caribbean market.

“It has been great, it is not the first time being at exhibitions; I can see a lot of potential customers, but, apart from that, the event has enabled me to meet with all of these different people from different countries and parts of the world.”

As the curtains closed on Saturday at the Expo, Singh will take back to the Cinderella County more than what he came with.
“We are in the process of expanding our factory and so on to cater for an increased demand that we are expecting. So all of these banks and so have made contact for us to seek loans from them. So right now, we are considering how we will move forward.”