Aleem Khan

The re-brand­ing of the Neal & Massy group to sim­ply Massy, has be­gun to show pos­i­tive re­sults, Massy pres­i­dent and group CEO Ger­vase Warn­er told re­porters at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain af­ter ad­dress­ing an Em­ploy­ers Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) din­ner.

"In a nut­shell, we're now start­ing to get da­ta, and we're see­ing that sales are im­prov­ing well over where they were last year, and we feel that this (re­brand­ing) was a good move, and it will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of our share­hold­ers. I'm pret­ty cer­tain that will be the case," he said.

In June this year, Neal & Massy an­nounced it was chang­ing its name to Massy "as part of a com­pre­hen­sive re­brand­ing ex­er­cise that uni­fies all sub­sidiary com­pa­nies to cre­ate a strong, con­sis­tent cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty," the com­pa­ny had said in a state­ment. The Massy Group re­port­ed in its lat­est re­sults "suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion" of its re­brand­ing, say­ing rev­enues in­creased by $962 mil­lion to $8.5 bil­lion for the nine months end­ed June 30.

Arthur Lok Jack's suc­ces­sor, new Massy chair­man Robert Bermudez said the group's prof­it be­fore tax in­creased by three per cent to $617 mil­lion be­fore ac­count­ing for the one-off re­brand­ing in­vest­ment.

In his re­port to share­hold­ers, Bermudez said: "Af­ter a $59 mil­lion charge for the in­vest­ment re­lat­ed to the group-wide re­brand­ing pro­gramme, group prof­it be­fore tax de­clined by 6.8 per cent ver­sus pri­or year to $558 mil­lion and group earn­ings per share fell by $0.25 to $3.74." He said with­out the re­brand­ing in­vest­ment, the group's earn­ings per share would have in­creased by 4.5 per cent to $4.17.

The group's new strate­gic di­rec­tion fo­cus­es on ac­ti­vat­ing ex­ist­ing syn­er­gies that con­nect prod­ucts to rel­e­vant ser­vices, cre­at­ing more ef­fi­cient and cost-ef­fec­tive val­ue propo­si­tions for con­sumers, the com­pa­ny said. "These syn­er­gies are de­fined as ecosys­tems in the con­text of the group," Massy said.

For ex­am­ple, with re­spect to buy­ing a new ve­hi­cle, cus­tomers have the op­tion of pur­chas­ing a ve­hi­cle from Massy Mo­tors, fi­nanc­ing it through Massy Fi­nance, and in­sur­ing it with Massy Unit­ed In­sur­ance, all un­der one roof. There are sev­er­al ecosys­tems with­in the Group. The re­brand­ing ex­er­cise uni­fies and iden­ti­fies the el­e­ments of each one un­der a sin­gle recog­nis­able name, the Massy state­ment said.

Warn­er told the ECA au­di­ence that Massy will con­tin­ue its cor­po­rate ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paign to demon­strate how Massy com­pa­nies work to­geth­er to sim­pli­fy cus­tomers' busi­ness trans­ac­tion. He al­so sang the new Massy jin­gle.

Gas cur­tail­ments

Asked for an up­date on the planned US$850 mil­lion Mit­subishi methanol to di­methyl ether plants at La Brea Union Es­tate, Warn­er said: "To­geth­er with the min­istry, the Japan­ese (Mit­subishi) and the Japan­ese In­vest­ment Bank in Tokyo, we're re­al­ly push­ing to try to make this de­ci­sion by next month, by No­vem­ber."Asked what de­ci­sion, he said: "You know, that the in­vestors will get the mon­ey, and we will in­deed build this plant."

In a May 8 T&T Guardian sto­ry, Chikara Jit­sumat­su, di­rec­tor of Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cal Ltd, the com­pa­ny formed to de­vel­op the project, had said a "fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion" was hoped to be reached by Au­gust/Sep­tem­ber 2014, af­ter the date was brought for­ward from March 2014.Asked if gas cur­tail­ments con­cern him, Warn­er said: "It's a big con­cern. That's cur­rent­ly one of the chal­lenges we have with the fi­nanciers–to get more as­sur­ance around that. That is a chal­lenge."

Asked if say­ing the project is at risk would be go­ing too far, he said, "Yes, that would be go­ing too far."Ques­tioned fur­ther about the strain it is putting on the plan, he said: "It's kind of ob­vi­ous, right. I don't think that any­body look­ing at a project like this would not say, 'Well lis­ten, with all the gas cur­tail­ments go­ing on, how can you be cer­tain your project will get the gas it needs?' Now, we have some as­sur­ance. We've seen the de­vel­op­ment plan for the up­stream (sup­plies)."

Warn­er said he al­so has "as­sur­ances from the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC) that the gas will be there. From what we see, the da­ta is there to sup­port it."