San­dra Chouthi

The ANSA McAL Group made a 2010 prof­it be­fore tax (PBT) of $954 mil­lion, which its chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Ger­ry Brooks de­scribed as a "record-year per­for­mance" in what was a "very dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing year lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly." The con­glom­er­ate's 2009 prof­it be­fore tax was $861 mil­lion, in­creas­ing its 2010 per­for­mance by 11 per cent. "Every seg­ment of our busi­ness in­creased prof­itabil­i­ty rang­ing from five per cent to as high as 42.5 per cent.

"Man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing and brew­ing seg­ment gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of about $2 bil­lion, and grew three per cent in 2010. Seg­ment prof­itabil­i­ty in­creased from $398 mil­lion to $421 mil­lion, an in­crease of six per cent," said Brooks. He said that the group's bev­er­age sec­tor ac­tu­al­ly grew, both from a lo­cal mar­ket stand­point, a re­gion­al mar­ket stand­point and across the al­co­hol cat­e­go­ry, by 17 per cent.

He was speak­ing at ANSA McAL's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing yes­ter­day at the Tatil Build­ing on Mar­aval Road in Port-of-Spain. Brooks said the Group's au­to­mo­tive, trad­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of about $2.2 bil­lion. He said the sec­tor's prof­it grew from $116 mil­lion to $129 mil­lion, an in­crease of 11 per cent. He said the 2010 au­to­mo­bile mar­ket gen­er­at­ed about 13,000 unit sales. On the ques­tion of the gen­er­al ef­fect on the lo­cal au­to­mo­bile in­dus­try of the tsuna­mi and earth­quake that hit Japan in March, Brooks said: "All car com­pa­nies glob­al­ly have been af­fect­ed and we con­tin­ue to work very close­ly with our prin­ci­pals to en­sure ad­e­quate and time­ly sup­plies."

Nor­man A Sab­ga, chair­man and chief ex­ec­u­tive at ANSA McAL, said the com­pa­ny has bought the world rights from Mack­e­son for every coun­try in the world ex­cept the Unit­ed King­dom and Eu­rope. "Quite frankly, sales in the Eu­ro­pean Union are less than the sales in Trinidad, but be­cause it's tied in­to oth­er prod­ucts in a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny, they could not sep­a­rate it. In terms of the po­ten­tial for that brand, we think it is phe­nom­e­nal. And it was a no-brain­er in terms of the ac­qui­si­tion be­cause the roy­al­ty we were pay­ing to the prin­ci­ple, it pays for it­self," Sab­ga said. He said the Group al­so de­cid­ed to in­vest $310 mil­lion in the con­struc­tion of a new clay block plant at Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas.

"The de­ci­sion was made, not that the mar­ket was de­clin­ing, but we have right now three kilns and some of the kilns are over 45 years old. "There­fore, if we are stay­ing in the busi­ness, we need­ed to in­vest in these op­er­a­tions. "The tech­nol­o­gy that we have bought is state-of-the-art and it will, in fact, use far less en­er­gy and far less labour," he said. Sab­ga said there will no longer be a grad­ing of its blocks with the use of the new­ly-ac­quired block-mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and that the plant's out­put will equal that of the three kilns ANSA McAL now owns. He said the first com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion from the new plant will be in Au­gust 2012. "We're in­vest­ing in ar­eas in which we have ex­per­tise, which is one of our core busi­ness­es," Sab­ga said.