It has long been said to re­duce your gro­cery bill; it may be best to grow your own.

Lo­cal, pub­licly list­ed, mul­ti­line group, Agos­ti­ni, is hop­ing that its re­brand can help grow re­gion­al busi­ness and by proxy help the growth of Caribbean brands.

Chris Al­cazar, CEO of the Agos­ti­ni Groups’ con­sumer prod­uct com­pa­nies, which were re­cent­ly re­brand­ed to Aca­do Foods and Aca­do Dis­tri­b­u­tion, ex­plained that the re­brand­ing was not on­ly built to bring the brands un­der one recog­nis­able en­ti­ty across the re­gion, but al­so to sup­ple­ment that growth.

“One thing we have not touched on at all in our re­brand­ing ex­er­cis­es is about the fact that there is a dri­ve on how you earn hard cur­ren­cies for all of the Caribbean mar­kets and where we do busi­ness. You’ve seen Massy and some of the oth­er groups be able to go in­to the US or Colom­bia. Part of that comes back to what we’re do­ing in the re­gion,” said Al­cazar in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

“As a big busi­ness in the re­gion, the fact is we are try­ing to gen­uine­ly move along Cari­com and how we con­nect it, and the work that our pre­de­ces­sors did in terms of Vic­tor Mout­tet and men like Arthur Lok Jack. Any work that they did in terms of try­ing to build the Caribbean as one re­gion, and bring­ing that to­geth­er. And for us, there’s still a lot of work to be done in the Caribbean or with­in Cari­com.”

Al­cazar said the group’s re­cent sales and pur­chase agree­ment to ac­quire Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Ja­maica was one the deals meant to push along that growth.

He said the re­brand­ing would al­low more peo­ple to iden­ti­fy some of the Aca­do group’s prod­ucts such as Swiss, Catel­li and Su­per Cow Milk as Caribbean brands and as such en­cour­age more sup­port with­in the re­gion.

“We dis­trib­ute rice, pas­ta, cheese, milk and milk pow­der. There are ne­ces­si­ties in there, and we are try­ing to take that re­spon­si­bly, take that very se­ri­ous as a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that we need to be there.

“And own­ing that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is crit­i­cal for us. And as far as we’re con­cerned, how we go to mar­ket, how we part­ner, how we do busi­ness, is re­al­ly crit­i­cal for us, in that we’re try­ing to make it sim­pler,” said Al­cazar. “We are try­ing to pro­vide very sim­ple so­lu­tions to some very com­plex prob­lems. And for us, it is about true part­ner­ship. “

He not­ed that there were many in­stances where these brands were be­ing cel­e­brat­ed across the re­gion.

“A lot of these brands, as far as peo­ple are con­cerned are Caribbean brands. And that’s ex­act­ly what we’re try­ing to do. Ja­maica is a big mar­ket for us, a big mar­ket, very pas­sion­ate peo­ple, very pas­sion­ate cul­ture. And we cer­tain­ly want to be part of that. We’re very hap­py to get that busi­ness go­ing on the ground. We’ve been do­ing busi­ness in Ja­maica with part­ners for, I think, maybe go­ing back al­most 25 years. So the Swiss brand, for in­stance, has been there and does very, very well in Ja­maica. But there is a lot more that we’re look­ing to do in terms of part­ner­ing in Ja­maica,” he said.

Al­cazar said this growth was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant giv­en the coun­try’s on­go­ing for­eign ex­change chal­lenges as well as Cari­com’s 25 by 2025 ini­tia­tive which is geared to­wards re­duc­ing the Caribbean’s im­port bill by 25 per cent by 2025.

The Aca­do group CEO ad­mit­ted it was chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion.

“I can say that, I have no in­flu­ence over con­sumers’ de­mand, but I think that from a man­u­fac­tur­ing as­pect, we are very in tune with where we can be com­pet­i­tive and what we can do to re­place im­ports, and there is a ma­jor dri­ve on to do that. By go­ing in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing you’re not just mak­ing a de­ci­sion to­day. It is not ‘let’s jump in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing and open a plant. It takes long-term com­mit­ment. It’s a lot of in­vest­ment.

“In most cas­es, what you find is that we have the ap­petite. Cer­tain­ly, our group has the ap­petite and has the re­sources and we con­tin­ue to look at op­por­tu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing our port­fo­lio of man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts with­in the re­gion to be able to feed the re­gion.

“That is ab­solute­ly a pri­or­i­ty for us, not just to be able to sup­ply to oth­er Cari­com is­lands, but to be able to look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­port to so many hard cur­ren­cy mar­kets like The US, like the UK, like Cana­da, like South Amer­i­ca,’ said Al­cazar.

He said a per­fect ex­am­ple of that for the Agos­ti­ni group would be its Peardrax brand, which is man­u­fac­tured right here in T&T and ex­port­ed to coun­tries, in­clud­ing the US, the UK and Cana­da.

“And we con­tin­ue to grow that. We con­tin­ue to grow our ex­ports. And again, it is go­ing in­to those hard cur­ren­cy mar­kets with prod­ucts that ei­ther might be unique to us or that we have some sort of com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage to go af­ter,” he said.

Al­cazar had pre­vi­ous­ly served as the pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent from 2017 to 2019. He said dur­ing that time the as­so­ci­a­tion recog­nised the for­eign ex­change and im­port chal­lenges that would come and there had been moves to re­duce such pres­sures. How­ev­er, he not­ed that now more need­ed to be done.

“We cer­tain­ly see our­selves as a re­gion­al busi­ness, but cer­tain­ly as a com­pa­ny deal­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go, we’re see­ing a lot of suc­cess in that dri­ve for ex­port of man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts, and cer­tain­ly some­thing we work very hard at.

“As you may or may not know, I sat as the pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion 2017 to 2019 and we did a lot of work just see­ing this com­ing and un­der­stand­ing that we are part of the so­lu­tion in terms of the man­u­fac­tur­ers.”

He said the Aca­do had con­tin­ued to push in that re­gard hop­ing to be a sup­ple­ment to ma­jor in­dus­tries across the is­lands.