It’s not just about re­mov­ing an apos­tro­phe ‘s’.

Just over a week ago, Agos­ti­ni’s Ltd re­brand­ed to be­come Agos­ti­ni Ltd.

Some may think it is a sim­ple change, but the re­brand is part of a wider vi­sion of the group.

“The re­brand­ing is far more ex­ten­sive than most peo­ple would re­alise, be­cause Agos­ti­ni’s Ltd now, Agos­ti­ni Lim­it­ed is a group of 21 com­pa­nies around the re­gion, and so many of our sub­sidiaries with­in Agos­ti­ni have al­so re­brand­ed,” said James Walk­er, CEO of the Agos­ti­ni Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal & Health­care Group, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

These changes in­clud­ed the name changes to man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies from Vem­co, Hand Arnold and Smith Robert­son to Aca­do Foods, Aca­do Dis­tri­b­u­tion and Aven­ta Trinidad & To­ba­go Ltd re­spec­tive­ly.

Aca­do Foods and Aca­do Dis­tri­b­u­tion are op­er­at­ed by Agos­ti­ni Ltd through its joint ven­ture, Aca­do Ltd (for­mer­ly CDP Lim­it­ed) with God­dard En­ter­pris­es of Bar­ba­dos. Aven­ta Trinidad & To­ba­go (for­mer­ly Smith Robert­son) is part of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care sec­tor of the Group, which in­cludes com­pa­nies in Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, and the Dutch Caribbean (Aru­ba and Cu­raçao).

“It’s been quite sig­nif­i­cant, sev­en com­pa­nies in our group are over 100 years old. Maybe 0.5 per cent of com­pa­nies glob­al­ly reach up to 100 years and those com­pa­nies have changed their names, so that’s a big deal,” said Walk­er, “At face val­ue, you may think, Agos­ti­ni’s to Agos­ti­ni. But ac­tu­al­ly, once you look at our groups, our sub­groups, our groups in the com­pa­ny, and the sub­sidiaries you’ll see that they al­so are go­ing through quite pro­found changes.”

He ex­plained that the change al­so high­light­ed the com­pa­ny’s ex­pan­sion across the re­gion as well as the evo­lu­tion of its busi­ness struc­ture.

He said, “The apos­tro­phe ‘s’ means gen­er­al­ly pos­ses­sion and own­er­ship. And Agos­ti­ni’s, the fam­i­ly com­pa­ny. It was owned by a fam­i­ly, you know, Agos­ti­ni now is a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny re­gion­al. It’s not just a Trinidad com­pa­ny. It’s more than the great lega­cy that the fam­i­lies who’ve been in­volved.”

Walk­er ex­plained that as part of the re­brand, the com­pa­ny’s lo­go was al­so changed with sub­tle vari­a­tions across the group so that cus­tomers around the re­gion would quick­ly recog­nise the var­i­ous com­pa­nies un­der the Agos­ti­ni um­brel­la.

He said, “The oth­er as­pect of it, once you dig in, once you get un­der the sur­face, is to al­so re­alise that we’re uni­fy­ing our com­pa­nies un­der a sin­gle vi­su­al iden­ti­ty, so that lo­go that Agos­ti­ni Ltd holds is al­so sim­i­lar. It’s the same lo­go that you see in the Aven­ta group and the Aca­do group but in dif­fer­ent colours. So there are ways that we are dis­tin­guish­ing our­selves in the groups that sit un­der Agos­ti­ni Ltd, but we ty­ing it back as well. Be­cause we al­so want our staff and our part­ners and our cus­tomers and our sup­pli­ers to un­der­stand the reach that we have across the re­gion. That al­lows us to strength­en our en­gage­ment with these stake­hold­ers while re­in­forc­ing our mar­ket pres­ence.”

The new Agos­ti­ni lo­go fea­tures four blue leaf-like shapes, rep­re­sent­ing its em­ploy­ees, part­ners, cus­tomers, and com­mu­ni­ties. They come to­geth­er to cre­ate a spark of in­no­va­tion and growth—the dri­ving force be­hind Agos­ti­ni, the com­pa­ny says.

Aca­do Foods and Aca­do Dis­tri­b­u­tion will use the new Group lo­go in a warm or­ange, while Aven­ta Trinidad & To­ba­go will use a vi­brant green ver­sion of the lo­go.

“This re­brand is about pre­sent­ing a sim­ple, sin­gu­lar, com­pelling en­try point to the wider Caribbean mar­ket for stake­hold­ers across the health­care sec­tor. Our aim is to be an in­te­grat­ed part­ner to re­gion­al health ecosys­tems in ser­vice of the vi­brant com­mu­ni­ties across this re­gion,” Walk­er stat­ed.

“Over the last three years, we’ve been very busy bring­ing com­pa­nies in­to our group and have ac­quired com­pa­nies in the dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts and health­care prod­ucts in Bar­ba­dos Ja­maica, Cu­ra­cao and Aru­ba as well. And we re­cent­ly an­nounced the sign­ing of a sales and pur­chase agree­ment to ac­quire Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica), which has both a con­sumer prod­ucts and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal di­vi­sion. And you asked the ques­tion around strat­e­gy. The re­al strat­e­gy around that is the re­gion­al po­si­tion that al­lows us to have strong, sus­tain­able, in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness­es, but re­gion­al­ly,” said Walk­er.

The com­pa­ny’s ag­gres­sive ex­pan­sion has gar­nered some at­ten­tion in the po­lit­i­cal sphere, with Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark rais­ing con­cerns in the up­per house that the brand’s ac­qui­si­tion of sig­nif­i­cant phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies edged it clos­er to hold­ing a mo­nop­oly in the lo­cal mar­ket.

Walk­er down­played those con­cerns.

“Fun­da­men­tal­ly, as part of the ac­qui­si­tions that we’ve un­der­tak­en over the last few years, there’s al­ways been a process, and that process is guid­ed by the laws of the coun­tries that we op­er­ate in, and typ­i­cal­ly there’s a fair trade com­mis­sion or some­thing equiv­a­lent, which does the as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine what a com­bined en­ti­ty be­comes and what it means for con­sumers. We re­spect and ful­ly abide by and are a part of that process of that eval­u­a­tion,” he said.

“When­ev­er there are ques­tions that are raised, we ful­ly en­gage those agen­cies in that re­gard as well. Cer­tain­ly, it’s some­thing that even when we make our own in­vest­ment de­ci­sions, we con­sid­er that and al­so en­sure that we don’t meet these thresh­olds be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly, that would cre­ate a large risk to the busi­ness.”

He al­so ad­dressed the grow­ing con­cern world­wide that ma­jor phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have been sub­ject to grow­ing pub­lic mis­trust and the group’s ap­proach to such prob­lems.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate that phar­ma, es­pe­cial­ly big phar­ma, doesn’t al­ways have the best rep­u­ta­tion. But I can cer­tain­ly at­test to the fact that the peo­ple that I work with are in­ter­est­ed in bring­ing so­lu­tions to the ta­ble in the Caribbean. Es­pe­cial­ly the ones who are look­ing at the in­no­v­a­tive things that ac­tu­al­ly do make a big dif­fer­ence for peo­ple who are deal­ing with a par­tic­u­lar ill­ness or a par­tic­u­lar con­di­tion that re­quires more ad­vanced, more in­no­v­a­tive, more mod­ern treat­ment. So, the peo­ple who I work with are very, very mo­ti­vat­ed to ad­vance health and en­hance lives. That’s why we de­fine that as our pur­pose, and that’s re­al­ly dri­ving this re­gion­al busi­ness.”

He stressed the re­gion­al ap­proach aimed to im­prove ac­cess, se­cu­ri­ty of sup­ply, and over­all health out­comes for con­sumers and pa­tients across the Caribbean.

CEO of the group’s con­sumer prod­uct com­pa­nies, Chris Al­cazar al­so placed em­pha­sis on the group’s re­gion­al pres­ence.

He said, “It is about strength­en­ing our po­si­tion for fu­ture growth, re­in­forc­ing our col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty, and en­sur­ing that our em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers, and part­ners see us and our joint busi­ness ven­tures as part of a larg­er, con­nect­ed, and sus­tain­able or­gan­i­sa­tion that brings peo­ple and prod­ucts to­geth­er, adding val­ue to their every­day lives.”

Two sig­nif­i­cant moves by the Agos­ti­ni group in the past year in­volved the ac­qui­si­tion of Massy Stores’ in-store phar­ma­cies and re­brand­ing them as Mphar­ma­cy, as well as Presto’s part­ner­ship with Lin­da’s bak­ery.

Glenn Ma­haraj, CEO of Su­per­Pharm Lim­it­ed, said the Mphar­ma­cy brand had gained great trac­tion with both sup­pli­ers and the pub­lic.

He said, “We con­tin­ue to strength­en our re­la­tion­ship with Massy to en­sure the el­e­vat­ed ex­pe­ri­ence we promised to their cus­tomers is de­liv­ered. In this vein, we have in­tro­duced a num­ber of ini­tia­tives here such as What­sApp and drop off of pre­scrip­tions, a wider as­sort­ment of items and much more to come. The tra­jec­to­ry of this brand is aligned to our strate­gic plan and we look for­ward to its con­tin­ued growth.”

As for the Presto Brand, he said, “The Presto name con­tin­ues to gain recog­ni­tion and strength na­tion­wide. Since the in­tro­duc­tion of our Presto Fresh stores, we have grown our mar­ket share for fresh, con­ve­nient foods along­side the lega­cy of pre­mi­um fresh­ly baked goods. We con­tin­ue to in­no­vate around our Presto Fresh to Go meals work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to im­prove on the qual­i­ty and as­sort­ment of meals for cus­tomers.”