PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The ANSA McAL Group’s per­for­mance for the first six months of 2023 has out­paced the group’s last pre-pan­dem­ic per­for­mance for the same pe­ri­od in 2019.

At the group’s pre­sen­ta­tion of its fi­nan­cial per­for­mance for the Jan­u­ary 1 to June 30 pe­ri­od, it was re­vealed the com­pa­ny record­ed a prof­it be­fore tax of $311 mil­lion, more than tripling the $93 mil­lion prof­it be­fore tax re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od last year.

Chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer Nicholas Jack­man con­firmed that the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial per­for­mance for pe­ri­od was im­pres­sive not on­ly for the post-pan­dem­ic re­cov­ery pe­ri­od but was favourable in com­par­i­son to pre-pan­dem­ic num­bers as well.

The group’s rev­enues for the six-month pe­ri­od were up by $105 mil­lion to $3.251 bil­lion, a 3 per cent im­prove­ment.

Jack­man not­ed that this was sig­nif­i­cant giv­en the no­table in­vest­ments made by the com­pa­ny in the pe­ri­od, in­clud­ing the com­ple­tion of the ac­qui­si­tion of the gen­er­al in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Colfire, and the pur­chase of a mi­nor­i­ty stake in the Ba­hami­an Brew­ery & Bev­er­age Com­pa­ny Ltd.

“We are in my words, primed for fund­ing growth. It is re­al­ly the po­si­tion we de­cid­ed to move with on a con­sol­i­dat­ed ba­sis. Again, just in sum­ma­ry, the sig­nif­i­cance is at $3.251 bil­lion, yet we are now not just above the pri­or year but ac­tu­al­ly we are above the pre-pan­dem­ic 2019. So the re­cov­ery is un­der­way,” said Jack­man.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the group An­tho­ny Sab­ga III not­ed the group record­ed im­prove­ments in most sec­tors, no­tably in bank­ing and in­sur­ance.

He not­ed that the com­ple­tion of the Colfire deal has now al­lowed the group to com­mand 150,000 cus­tomers or 23 per cent of the in­sur­ance mar­ket.

The CEO was al­so pleased with the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of the bev­er­age sec­tor, as he gave de­tails con­cern­ing the pro­duc­tion of Carib beer un­der con­tract with strate­gic brew­ing part­ners in Greece and Cana­da.

“In the case of Greece and Cana­da, the out­put of that strate­gic chan­nel has been find­ing pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty that is not our own, but that we li­cense and we have a full sort of gov­er­nance struc­ture on as­sur­ing that the prod­uct is in keep­ing with that qual­i­ty state­ment that is brand Carib at this par­tic­u­lar time. There could be oth­er brands that we may put through in that pipeline and oth­er pipelines so keep look­ing. And then on top of that, we are look­ing for ac­qui­si­tions we can do in that mar­ket,” said Sab­ga III.

ANSA McAL chair­man Nor­man Sag­ba al­so con­firmed there had been in­vest­ment in a new bot­tling line for the brew­ery, which he ex­pect­ed to be a game chang­er.

“The line that is go­ing in this state of the art. It’s an over $200 mil­lion in­vest­ment. What that is go­ing to do as well is when we have a to­tal­ly re­turn­able line, which will be used for the lo­cal mar­ket, it will free up the oth­er two lines for non-re­turn­ables,” said Sab­ga.