The ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies has com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of the Monte Pla­ta So­lar Farm in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Speak­ing at the con­glom­er­ate’s an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing yes­ter­day, ANSA McAL’s Group’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III said the in­vest­ment is in line with the group’s mod­ern en­er­gy agen­da.

The so­lar park cur­rent­ly has an op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty of 33.4 megawatt peak.

Sab­ga said the sec­ond phase of the Monte Pla­ta Park is im­mi­nent.

Phase two will ex­pand the park to 75.6 megawatt peak of in­stalled pho­to­volta­ic ca­pac­i­ty.

Over the course of its op­er­a­tional lifes­pan the ex­pand­ed so­lar park will help avoid the pro­duc­tion of near­ly two mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide.

This ac­qui­si­tion comes on the heels of the ANSA McAL group’s 2018 in­vest­ment in an op­er­a­tional wind farm in Cos­ta Ri­ca.

But what about right here in T&T?

“We con­tin­ue to work with our tech­no­log­i­cal and in­vest­ment con­sor­tium part­ners and con­tin­ue to look at and court a very in­ter­est­ing pipeline of re­new­able projects. Re­new­ables are some­thing that are on the agen­da of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and we are aligned with seek­ing to sup­port that agen­da as and where op­por­tu­ni­ties ex­ist,” Sab­ga said.

In ad­di­tion to this re­new­able en­er­gy thrust, Sab­ga said ANSA McAL is al­so re­brand­ing its plas­tic and glass re­cy­cling un­der the um­brel­la of ANSA pack­ag­ing.

On the is­sue of cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, Sab­ga said af­ter hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly be­ing af­fect­ed by a ran­somware at­tack the group in­tends to do all in its pow­er to en­sure some­thing like that nev­er hap­pens again.

“Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is the buzz word of the day and it is an area we don’t play with, we have upped sig­nif­i­cant­ly our cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty train­ing, relook­ing at all of the back­up sys­tems, we have en­gaged with third par­ties for re­views and are al­so in­cor­po­rat­ing a state of the art cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty of­fer­ing and are at a very ad­vanced stage,” he said.

One of the high­lights of yes­ter­day’s AGM was when Dr Tonya Vil­lafana was ap­point­ed to the ANSA McAL board of di­rec­tors of for the term of one year.

T&T born Vil­lafana is the vice pres­i­dent, glob­al fran­chise head of in­fec­tion vac­cines and im­mune ther­a­pies at As­trazeneca.

“Dr Vil­lafana wel­come to our board and we look for­ward to your con­tri­bu­tions,” the group’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man A Nor­man Sab­ga stat­ed.

Al­so reap­point­ed to the board for a two-year pe­ri­od were An­drew N Sab­ga, An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III, Tere­sa White, Mark J Mor­gan, Krys­ta Behrens De Li­ma, Nor­man Christie and Vic­ki-Ann As­severo.

For the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021 ANSA McAL re­port­ed a $50 mil­lion in­crease in rev­enue to $5.97 bil­lion.

The Group’s re­port­ed prof­it be­fore tax was $935 mil­lion.

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