Shal­iza Has­sanali

Af­ter op­er­at­ing at a loss for years, the T&T Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) will soon launch its line of spe­cial­ty cas­sa­va, sweet pota­to and plan­tain breads, which can fetch a prof­it of $36 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.For TTA­BA chair­man Joe Pires, the launch will be the com­pa­ny's proud­est mo­ment, hav­ing strug­gled in the past.Pires said the TTA­BA ba­si­cal­ly bit off more than they could chew ini­tial­ly.

"We op­er­at­ed in a buck­shot ap­proach which we had to change in or­der to sur­vive," he told the Sun­day Guardian.Hav­ing tak­en the bull by its horns last Oc­to­ber, Pires said, they are be­gin­ning to see the light at the end of the tun­nel with the bak­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of its spe­cial­ty breads."We have been man­ag­ing our cash flow prop­er­ly so we do not re­peat er­rors of the past. At this stage, we can't af­ford to spend a bad cent. Every­thing has to be scru­ti­nised by the board to en­sure prop­er ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy," Pires said.

The change in TTA­BA's man­age­ment style came af­ter Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj re­fused to fund its Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, which end­ed last Sep­tem­ber.A sys­tems au­dit re­port done by the Min­istry of Fi­nance In­vest­ments Di­vi­sion Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee, dat­ed No­vem­ber 2011, which the Sun­day Guardian pub­lished last Oc­to­ber, showed that TTA­BA had in­curred $49.6 mil­lion in net loss­es in com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions, with an ad­di­tion­al $23 mil­lion spent on non-com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ma­haraj said TTA­BA was not ac­count­able to the Gov­ern­ment and there were no checks and bal­ances.For TTA­BA to get gov­ern­ment sup­port, Ma­haraj said then, they will have to agree to a cer­tain arrange­ment.

With their backs now against the wall, Pires said, the board had to take de­ci­sive ac­tion and be­gan fo­cus­ing on eight com­modi­ties–cas­sa­va, co­conut wa­ter, sweet pota­to, plan­tain, paw paw, sweet corn, pom­me­cythere, and hot pep­pers–which have the po­ten­tial to earn mil­lions in rev­enue for the non-prof­it com­pa­ny when processed at its state-of-the-art plant in Freeport."We thought about shut­ting down or tak­ing a risk. Every­one on the board agreed to take the risk," he said.

To­day, Pires said, the risk was worth it.

Cut­ting cor­ners

Pires said TTA­BA had to re­struc­ture its op­er­a­tions, down­size staff, cut em­ploy­ees' salaries and close three of its of­fices, which saved the com­pa­ny be­tween $2 to $3 mil­lion in the last six months."It was dif­fi­cult to stand on our own and be­come vi­able, but we are putting our shoul­ders to the wheel," said Pires, who was joined by TTA­BA's act­ing CEO Neil Go­sine, root crop rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ramdeo Boon­doo and Hazel Brown, chair­man of the bread com­mit­tee, at his of­fice in San Juan on Tues­day.

On April 22, TTA­BA will launch its Farmer's Pride spe­cial­ty breads, which have been avail­able at se­lect­ed su­per­mar­kets since last year. The bread prices range from $13 to $16 a loaf, which TTA­BA wants to stan­dard­ise.On April 22, the bread will be of­fi­cial­ly launched at The Nor­mandie, St Ann's."We in­tend to go on an ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to in­form those who have not tast­ed our breads to do so."

Of the three breads, Go­sine said, cas­sa­va was their biggest sell­er be­cause of its 40 per cent puree com­po­si­tion and taste.To get this project up and run­ning, TTA­BA re­cent­ly signed agree­ments with lo­cal bak­eries to pro­duce bread and 38 farm­ers to sup­ply cas­sa­va us­ing 240 acres of land.TTA­BA's mis­sion is to re­duce T&T's high food im­port bill by pro­vid­ing con­sumers with lo­cal al­ter­na­tives.

Every day, 9,000 cas­sa­va, sweet pota­to and plan­tain loaves reach the shelves of su­per­mar­kets.But TTA­BA wants to in­crease its cas­sa­va loaves from 3,000 to 5,000 loaves by De­cem­ber, hav­ing pen­e­trat­ed the mar­ket.By 2014, they want to ramp up pro­duc­tion to 9,000 loaves.To keep its pro­duc­tion line go­ing, the farm­ers need to pro­duce 120,000 pounds of cas­sa­va each month.

For each pound of A grade cas­sa­va pro­duced, the farm­ers are paid $2. Grade C fetch­es a price of $1 per pound. The sale of the bread, Pires said, can bring a prof­it of $3 mil­lion month­ly for TTA­BA."If we achieve this, we can be­come a prof­itable com­pa­ny. Once we can prove our­selves ef­fec­tive and achieve our ob­jec­tives, we are hop­ing the min­istry will ex­tend a help­ing hand."

Plan forSchool-Feed­ing Pro­gramme

Pires has in­vit­ed ma­jor bak­eries like Kiss, Lin­da's and Coel­ho to buy in­to their processed prod­ucts, say­ing TTA­BA can sup­ply the purees and they make the breads, us­ing the Farm­ers Pride name.Pires ad­mit­ted that when they came up with the Farmer's Pride brand, "un­known to us it was al­ready a reg­is­tered com­pa­ny."They lat­er dis­cov­ered that busi­ness­man Richard Azar had a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered with the iden­ti­cal name, which he agreed to re­lease to TTA­BA.

Boon­doo said news of the bread has al­ready made its way to some Caribbean coun­tries, with Bar­ba­dos en­quir­ing about its puree."We can't look at ex­port­ing un­til we see about our coun­try first," Go­sine said.TTA­BA is al­so ne­go­ti­at­ing with the School-Feed­ing Pro­gramme to use the breads for their break­fast and lunch meals.Next month, TTA­BA will do re­search in­to sweet pota­to and there­after plan­tain to fur­ther in­crease its bread sup­ply, he said.