Unilever Caribbean saw its half year rev­enues in­crease by 7.5 per cent in what chair­man Pablo Gar­ri­do de­scribed as the com­pa­ny's con­tin­ued re­turn to growth "in a very chal­leng­ing ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment."

The com­pa­ny's lat­est unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults show an in­crease in prof­its af­ter tax to $23.8 mil­lion, up from $18.3 mil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. Earn­ings per share closed at 91 cents show­ing a 30 per cent in­crease over 2015.

"We have al­so main­tained our strat­e­gy to in­vest ag­gres­sive­ly in our fac­to­ries dur­ing the year, build­ing on the en­hance­ments al­ready made in 2015. Aligned to this ini­tia­tive, in the sec­ond half of the year the first in a se­ries of planned ma­jor over hauls of our man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ties will com­mence," Gar­ri­do said.

"Look­ing for­ward, the un­cer­tain­ty in the Trinidad econ­o­my re­mains a chal­lenge while the im­pact of the scarci­ty of for­eign cur­ren­cy is an on­go­ing con­cern. De­spite these ad­ver­si­ties we are en­cour­aged by our year to date per­for­mance as we press on with our com­mit­ment to grow prof­itably and de­liv­er­ing strong val­ue for our share­hold­ers."