Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) yes­ter­day an­nounced that it was cut­ting the price of its stan­dard 42.5kg bag by $13. In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the Clax­ton Bay ce­ment pro­duc­er said that it was forced to place a $13 per bag sur­charge on the price of ce­ment two weeks in­to its re­cent in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions im­passe that be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 27 and end­ed on May 28. TCL said: "The ad­di­tion­al charge was dri­ven by the high­er cost of sat­is­fy­ing the lo­cal ce­ment de­mand due to ex­ten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances cre­at­ed by the strike-among these, the im­por­ta­tion of ce­ment and clink­er (in­ter­me­di­ate prod­uct in the man­u­fac­ture of ce­ment) from oth­er TCL Group op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, ad­min­is­tra­tive and oth­er lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges." The com­pa­ny said that giv­en TCL's re­moval of the sur­charge, re­tail prices in the lo­cal mar­ket were ex­pect­ed to re­vert to pre-strike prices, which were in the range of $49.50 to $54.50 per 42.5kg bag of TCL Pre­mi­um Plus. The re­moval of a per sur­charge, which the com­pa­ny that it was forced to place on the price of ce­ment two weeks in­to its re­cent in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions im­passe that be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 27 and end­ed on May 28.

In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment, gen­er­al man­ag­er, Sat­nar­ine Bachew, said that the com­pa­ny's pro­duc­tion was back up to its full ca­pac­i­ty, re­mov­ing the de­pen­den­cy on im­port­ed prod­uct and clink­er. "There have been sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial set­backs from which we are still re­cov­er­ing, how­ev­er, we in­di­cat­ed that our ex-fac­to­ry prices would re­vert by end Ju­ly and there­fore, we are du­ty bound to ho­n­our our word with­in the spec­i­fied time­frame," Bachew said. He went on to say, how­ev­er, that the com­pa­ny will be re­view­ing its pric­ing regime in the 4th quar­ter of 2012. TCL said that it thanked all its loy­al cus­tomers, share­hold­ers, in­vestors, em­ploy­ees and oth­er stake­hold­ers for their un­der­stand­ing and sup­port dur­ing a very chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od in the com­pa­ny's his­to­ry and re­it­er­at­ed its on­go­ing com­mit­ment to the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and by ex­ten­sion, the re­gion.