Lo­cal, pub­licly list­ed con­glom­er­ate, Agos­ti­ni’s Ltd, dis­closed on Fri­day that the com­pa­ny had signed a sale and pur­chase agree­ment with the share­hold­ers of Health Brands Ltd, a Ja­maican phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and per­son­al care dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny, to ac­quire 100 per cent of the is­sued and out­stand­ing shares of that com­pa­ny.

The ac­qui­si­tion of the Ja­maican com­pa­ny is the sec­ond to be an­nounced by the T&T com­pa­ny this month, and the fifth in which it was in­volved, in about two years.

On May 5, Agos­ti­ni’s an­nounced that its sub­sidiary, Caribbean Dis­tri­b­u­tion Part­ners Ltd, pur­chased 80 per cent of the is­sued and out­stand­ing shares of Chi­nook Trad­ing Cana­da Ltd, a Mon­tre­al, Cana­da-based con­sumer prod­uct trad­ing firm that op­er­ates pri­mar­i­ly in the Caribbean.

Caribbean Dis­trib­u­tors Part­ners is a whole­sale dis­trib­u­tor of food, bev­er­ages and gro­cery prod­ucts that is a 50/50 joint ven­ture be­tween Agos­ti­ni’s and God­dard En­ter­pris­es Ltd of Bar­ba­dos. The joint ven­ture com­pa­ny’s lo­cal sub­sidiary (CDP Trinidad Ltd) con­sists of two di­vi­sions in­volved in FM­CG and food man­u­fac­tur­ing seg­ments, Hand Arnold and Vem­co re­spec­tive­ly.

Agos­ti­ni’s closed the ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­trib­u­tor Os­car Fran­cois and its re­lat­ed com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tur­er, In­ter­sol, through its Smith Robert­son sub­sidiary on April 30, 2021.

On Oc­to­ber 1, 2021, through its sub­sidiary, en­er­gy equip­ment and ser­vices provider Rosco Petroa­vance, Agos­ti­ni’s ac­quired 100 per cent of Process Com­po­nents Ltd, a com­pa­ny that was owned by di­rec­tors of Laugh­lin & De­Gannes. Rosco Petroa­vance and Process Com­po­nents are pri­mar­i­ly in­volved in the sale and ser­vice of oil­field and man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment.

And the T&T com­pa­ny com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of Collins Ltd and Carlisle Lab­o­ra­to­ries Ltd of Bar­ba­dos, which op­er­ate in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care seg­ment, in De­cem­ber 2022.

Of the ac­qui­si­tion of Health Brands Ltd, the board of Agos­ti­ni’s said: “This trans­ac­tion has re­ceived reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval and the due dili­gence process is near­ing com­ple­tion. It is ex­pect­ed that this trans­ac­tion will be fi­nalised by the end of June 2023, and we will make a fur­ther an­nounce­ment at that time.

In its unau­dit­ed re­sults for the six months end­ed March 31, Agos­ti­ni’s an­nounced af­ter-tax prof­its of $254.69 mil­lion, which is 74,2 per cent more than the $146.18 mil­lion it de­clared for the first half of its 2022 fi­nan­cial year. The com­pa­ny’s au­dit­ed prof­it for its 2022 fi­nan­cial year was $274.93 mil­lion.

The largest share­hold­er of Agos­ti­ni’s Ltd is the Mout­tet fam­i­ly, which owns 39,925,538 shares in the com­pa­ny, equal to 57.77 per cent of the con­glom­er­ate’s is­sued shares. Agos­ti­ni’s chair­man is Chris­t­ian Mout­tet.

The sec­ond largest share­hold­er of Agos­ti­ni’s Ltd is the Ahamad fam­i­ly, which owns 10,084,712 shares, which is 14.59 per cent of the com­pa­ny.