NASSAU, BAHAMAS- The owner of Chilly Willy, the country’s leading ice manufacturer, is calling out what he describes as an increase of unlicensed and substandard operators entering the ice business—cutting into sales and bypassing the standards legitimate producers are required to meet.
“You got a lot of different people who don’t even have a license to manufacture ice,” said Sean Cartwright, owner of Chilly Willy. “None of them meet international standards but we meet international standards.”
Cartwright said his company has invested heavily in industrial-scale equipment to ensure consistency and capacity. “We have 40-ton ice machines—just one motor is like $20,000,” he said. “We don’t have those small ice makers. But you got a bunch of them right now making ice and selling it. It just slowly chews you right down.”
Cartwright noted that while demand has picked up as expected in the summer, sales numbers have slipped over time, largely due to the number of informal sellers entering the market without oversight. “They sell ice even more than what we sell it for,” Carter said. “Our prices have been basically the same from day one.”
Chilly Willy’s pricing, he noted, has remained steady—even during national emergencies. “When the hurricane come, we sell medium bags for $5 just to help the public out,” he said. “You don’t go up in the price—you go down in times like that. Those people go up in the price. They double, triple the price on people.”
Despite attempts to raise concerns with authorities, Cartwright says little action has been taken.
He added: “If I wholesale a large bag of ice for $7, I’m making maybe a dollar, just a dollar something,” he said. “They take that same bag and sell it for $16. Price control in this country is nothing. They just kill it.”
Still, Cartwright said Chilly Willy remains the go-to supplier for many public and private institutions including hotels, with many consumers who trust their product. “They know who has the best ice. They want our ice.”
