Rapheal John-Lall

The Na­tion­al Flour Mills' (NFM) search for new mar­kets will help ease the prob­lem of in­suf­fi­cient sup­ply of for­eign ex­change, says Michael Bazie, the chair­man of the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny.

"At the NFM, we have his­tor­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed a mod­el in which most of our raw ma­te­ri­als and grain pur­chas­es are paid for in US dol­lars, but our sales are in TT dol­lars. Giv­en the present sit­u­a­tion where there is this tight for­eign ex­change earn­ings sit­u­a­tion, we feel that we must en­gage in this thrust of mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion re­gion­al­ly to be­gin to ad­dress this im­bal­ance," he said.

Bazie was speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence last week Thurs­day at NFM's head of­fice, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain.

Bazie, who speaks flu­ent Span­ish, has been NFM chair­man since 2013 and is a for­mer di­rec­tor at eTeck.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease from NFM af­ter the tour of NFM's plant on Wright­son Road on Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny has had strong fi­nan­cial re­sults over the last few years and the search for new mar­kets in Cu­ba and Latin Amer­i­ca will on­ly strength­en the com­pa­ny's re­sults.

"For the past three years, NFM fo­cused sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts and re­sources on ac­cel­er­at­ing its growth strate­gies. The re­sults of this is well re­flect­ed in im­proved fi­nan­cial re­sults over the pre­vi­ous three suc­ces­sive fi­nan­cial pe­ri­ods, in­clud­ing last year where the Sep­tem­ber 2015 fi­nan­cial re­sults show sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment over the same pe­ri­od in 2014. Based on our 2016 cor­po­rate strate­gic plan, it is ex­pect­ed that our fi­nan­cial re­sults will im­prove even fur­ther in 2016."

NFM's state­ment al­so said over the last year the "wors­en­ing for­eign ex­change sit­u­a­tion" char­ac­terised by ex­treme dif­fi­cul­ty in ob­tain­ing US dol­lars for pur­chas­ing raw ma­te­ri­als caused the com­pa­ny to ac­cel­er­ate its ex­port dri­ve to in­clude new mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with de­vel­op­ment of new prod­ucts to sat­is­fy re­gion­al de­mand.

"New prod­ucts de­vel­oped re­cent­ly in­clude � Good'nNat­ur­al Cracked Wheat and Li­on Roti and Dou­bles flour for the com­mer­cial mar­ket while ex­trud­ed fish foods for tilapia and sim­i­lar va­ri­eties of farmed fish­es are be­ing pro­duced for the grow­ing aqua­cul­ture in­dus­try."

The safe qual­i­ty food (SQF) sys­tem is one of the high­est and most recog­nised glob­al sys­tems for food qual­i­ty. At NFM, this is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in 2016 with full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ex­pect­ed in March 2017. This will al­low NFM's prod­ucts en­try in­to the most strin­gent and com­pet­i­tive mar­kets like the USA.

Ac­cord­ing to NFM, the need to earn for­eign ex­change is one of their ma­jor thrusts in 2016.

"The need to earn for­eign ex­change with com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts which pro­vide val­ue for mon­ey con­tin­ues to be our thrust in 2016. By 2017, we in­tend to in­crease ex­port sales as a per­cent­age of to­tal sales to 20 per cent from the 2015 po­si­tion of 12 per cent, to earn in­creas­ing amounts of the for­eign ex­change that we utilise. We will grow our ex­ist­ing mar­kets in Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, An­tigua, Suri­name, Grena­da, St Vin­cent, St Kitts and St Lu­cia while en­ter­ing new mar­kets in Cu­ba, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Pana­ma and Haiti in 2016.

Latin mar­ket

Kelvin Ma­habir, CEO of the NFM, who al­so spoke at the press brief­ing, said this year NFM will be mak­ing a strong ef­fort to go not on­ly to Cu­ba but oth­er Span­ish-speak­ing mar­kets.

"We do not on­ly sell flour but seeds as well as a num­ber of oth­er prod­ucts. We have been in­creas­ing those mar­kets and, in 2016, we have tar­get­ed to grow our mar­kets be­cause we need to in­crease rev­enues. Al­so, be­cause we need to raise for­eign-ex­change earn­ings. The Cuban mar­ket has been of in­ter­est to us for some time. The ease of do­ing busi­ness with Cu­ba will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved," he said.

The re­lease al­so said that spe­cif­ic brand­ing will al­low them to make en­try at ap­pro­pri­ate price points in­to Span­ish-speak­ing coun­tries like Cu­ba where there ap­pears to be many op­por­tu­ni­ties for their prod­ucts such as flour, fish feed and pets.

Busi­ness ties

Guiller­mo Vazquez, Cuban Am­bas­sador who was part of the NFM plant tour, said Cu­ba needs the prod­ucts that NFM has to of­fer and the north Caribbean coun­try is in­ter­est­ed in do­ing busi­ness with NFM.

Af­ter the tour he had a closed-door meet­ing with NFM's chair­man and CEO.

Vazquez, who al­so spoke dur­ing the me­dia brief­ing, said Cu­ba has to iden­ti­fy what prod­ucts are need­ed from NFM.

"I am not sure how many quan­ti­ties we may need and what are the prod­ucts but we have known the NFM since the 1980s," he said.

When asked by the me­dia about do­ing busi­ness in US dol­lars, he replied by say­ing that Cu­ba ac­cepts all oth­er ma­jor cur­ren­cies in­clud­ing the eu­ro and Cana­di­an.

"At this mo­ment be­cause of the US em­bar­go it is not pos­si­ble to use the US dol­lar. It is im­por­tant that we build re­la­tion­ships with oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion. We have re­la­tions with Re­pub­lic Bank and Ex­im­Bank," he said.

He al­so said the TTMA would take six com­pa­nies this week to Cu­ba while NFM will vis­it Cu­ba in April.

There is the T&T Trade Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of­fice in Cu­ba that helps busi­ness­es.

Ma­habir added that when NFM ex­ports, it prices in US dol­lars.

"In re­cent times our sup­pli­ers and bankers have been able to use mul­ti­ple cur­ren­cies in terms of mak­ing and set­tling pay­ments. So we now have op­tions for eu­ros, Cana­di­an dol­lars and, of course, the US dol­lars. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, they do not take TT dol­lars," he said.

The Cuban en­voy, af­ter the tour of the NFM plant, praised it for be­ing "mod­ern and ef­fi­cient."

Ma­habir al­so said that Cu­ba's tourism sec­tor is grow­ing by leaps and bounds and it of­fers even greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for a com­pa­ny like NFM.

"The tourism sec­tor in Cu­ba is open­ing up. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, it would have been Eu­ro­peans and Cana­di­ans. Now the US when they do vis­it would go through Ja­maica or one of those coun­tries. That al­so of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties to sell di­rect­ly to those com­pa­nies in the tourism sec­tor apart from the Gov­ern­ment owned com­pa­nies that im­port food," he said.

Re­sults of meet­ing

Ac­cord­ing to the NFM, these were some of the ma­jor points to come out of the meet­ing with the Cuban Am­bas­sador.

1. The Cuban am­bas­sador high­light­ed his de­sire for the doors to com­mu­ni­ca­tion to be kept open be­tween Cu­ba and T&T so as to de­vel­op and main­tain cor­dial com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween both coun­tries and to fos­ter mu­tu­al busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties. He has al­ready ini­ti­at­ed dis­cus­sions with Ex­im­Bank to fa­cil­i­tate gen­er­al busi­ness part­ner­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween T&T and Cu­ba.

2. NFM will ex­plore part­ner­ship op­por­tu­ni­ties with Cuban com­pa­nies in the tourism in­dus­try such as ho­tels as well as with gov­ern­ment agen­cies and tilapia farms.

3. NFM will ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­port raw ma­te­ri­als from Cu­ba such as rice bran.