Pep­si-Co­la Trinidad Bot­tling Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (PCT) is be­ing sold to Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners Lim­it­ed, a joint­ly owned sub­sidiary of Agos­ti­ni's Lim­it­ed and God­dard En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed, for US$13 mil­lion.

In a no­tice to share­hold­ers yes­ter­day, Agos­ti­ni's chair­man JP Esau said the pur­chase will be fi­nalised on No­vem­ber 1. The cost to Agos­ti­ni's will be US$6.5 mil­lion.

PCT is the li­censee and dis­trib­u­tor in T&T of the Pep­si­Co range of bev­er­ages–Pep­si, Moun­tain Dew, 7UP and Ocean Spray–al­so dis­trib­utes Peardrax and Cy­drax un­der li­cence. The com­pa­ny al­so owns and dis­trib­utes the JuC and Fizz brands and has dis­tri­b­u­tion rights in Bar­ba­dos for the Pep­si­Co brands and Peardrax and Cy­drax.

Esau said: "The strate­gic in­tent is the trans­fer to PCT of oth­er bev­er­age lines that are dis­trib­uted by the group, with a view of hav­ing a fo­cused bev­er­age mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny which we ex­pect will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on our earn­ings over the medi­um to long term."

Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners Lim­it­ed merges six com­pa­nies from the two groups–Hand Arnold Trinidad Lim­it­ed, Han­schell In­niss Lim­it­ed, Core­as Dis­tri­b­u­tion Lim­it­ed, Pe­ter & Com­pa­ny Ltd, In­de­pen­dence Agen­cies Lim­it­ed and Desin­co Lim­it­ed.