ANSA McAL will be in­vest­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$6 mil­lion in Guyana for a wharf and lay­down yard while cre­at­ing 100 jobs in the cor­po­rate re­pub­lic.

In a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view Frances Bain-Cum­ber­batch, chief le­gal and ex­ter­nal af­fairs Of­fi­cer at the ANSA McAL Group told the Busi­ness Guardian the fig­ure in­cludes in­fra­struc­ture and prepar­ing the land.

The group’s Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny Sab­ga III re­cent­ly an­nounced the ac­qui­si­tion of 82 acres of land in the Wales, West Bank De­mer­ara re­gion and will be­gin the de­vel­op­ment of a wharf and lay­down yard with­in that acreage to fa­cil­i­tate port and ma­rine com­merce.

Con­struc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin around April next year which is pro­ject­ed to end by the fourth quar­ter of 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to Bain-Cum­ber­batch 100 di­rect jobs are ex­pect­ed to be gen­er­at­ed as well as many oth­er in­di­rect ones be­ing cre­at­ed.

In giv­ing de­tails about the project, Bain-Cum­ber­batch said, “Ten acres out of that 82 would be ded­i­cat­ed to a lay­down yard where we would be stor­ing, han­dling raw ma­te­ri­als, off-load­ing ma­te­ri­als as well, light as­sem­bly of prod­ucts not on­ly for the group but al­so for third par­ty cus­tomers.”

She added this will fa­cil­i­tate mar­itime com­merce be­tween the east and west bank of Guyana, trade be­tween George­town and en­vi­rons and al­so Wales and en­vi­rons.

“It would ba­si­cal­ly fa­cil­i­tate the group’s growth but al­so com­merce gen­er­al­ly in Guyana mak­ing it more easy to trans­act busi­ness,” Bain-Cum­ber­batch said, not­ing the vast­ness of the Guyanese land­scape and the need to fur­ther cre­ate con­nec­tiv­i­ty be­tween re­gions to en­sure every one has ac­cess to prod­ucts.

Dur­ing his re­marks, the Group CEO al­so spoke about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of man­u­fac­tur­ing bev­er­ages lo­cal­ly un­der the Carib Brew­ery brand; a sub­sidiary of the ANSA McAL Group.

Guyana Brew­ery Inc--the lo­cal chap­ter of Carib Brew­ery--was launched in Guyana last year and sim­i­lar­ly fo­cused on the sale and mar­ket­ing of Carib Brew­ery’s range of bev­er­age prod­ucts.

Bain-Cum­ber­batch said a fea­si­bil­i­ty study is cur­rent­ly be­ing con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine the vi­a­bil­i­ty of a “green field brew­ery” in Guyana to man­u­fac­ture all of the brew­ery’s prod­ucts and bring these to the Guyanese mar­ket and al­so cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­port mar­kets.

“We have Suri­name right next door and Guyana is an en­try point to the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket so we are ex­am­in­ing that in terms of bev­er­age.

“In terms of our man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor we are in­creas­ing our of­fer­ings in paint. In the Guyanese mar­ket there’s greater ac­cess to our pre­mi­um brands of Berg­er, Pen­ta and Sis­sons.

“We opened or first colour shop in Guyana in late 2021 and re­cent­ly when we opened the ANSA McAL fa­cil­i­ty in Berbice where we launched the mi­ni-mart that just opened. There will al­so be a colour shop there in ad­di­tion to an au­to­mo­tive show­room,” Bain-Cum­ber­batch added.

ANSA McAL has been in Guyana for the last 30 years.

And, ac­cord­ing to Bain-Cum­ber­batch, con­sis­tent in­vest­ments were made in its peo­ple and in­fra­struc­ture “long be­fore oil was a fac­tor.”

“We have 400 em­ploy­ees in Guyana, 98 per cent of those are Guyanese. We have had long ties and in­ter­est in Guyana and the Guyana’s econ­o­my is grow­ing rapid­ly. So just like any oth­er ter­ri­to­ry where there is op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth and de­vel­op­ment, Guyana presents that for us and we are al­ready there, have been there and are vest­ed there,” she ex­plained, re­it­er­at­ing there’s every rea­son for the com­pa­ny to want ex­pand its op­er­a­tions in that coun­try.

Re­gard­ing some of the chal­lenges en­coun­tered over the last three decades while do­ing busi­ness in Guyana Bain-Cum­ber­batch said the com­pa­ny has al­ways had very good re­la­tions with its Gov­ern­ment and its pri­vate sec­tor.

“We have ac­tu­al­ly been able to flour­ish be­cause of the en­vi­ron­ment that has been cre­at­ed there. Of course, there would have been chal­lenges around phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture but gen­er­al­ly we have had very good ex­pe­ri­ence in Guyana in de­vel­op­ing our busi­ness and so on, so we re­al­ly don’t have many com­plaints,” she added.

Bain-Cum­ber­batch al­so not­ed Guyana con­tin­ues to make im­mense strides in its phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, of­fer­ing even more av­enues to busi­ness.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, that coun­try’s ease of do­ing busi­ness has al­so great­ly im­proved.

“The Gov­ern­ment is clear­ly geared to­wards strength­en­ing trade with­in Guyana and in Cari­com and we are quite hap­py so see that,” Bain-Cum­ber­batch added.

Merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions

Ac­cord­ing to Bain-Cum­ber­batch ANSA has made and is al­so in the process of mak­ing some sig­nif­i­cant ac­qui­si­tions in its fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor.

For in­stance, it ac­quired Bank of Bar­o­da which is now ANSA Bank.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Bain-Cum­ber­batch said the com­pa­ny is “very close” to launch­ing its full dig­i­tal and pre­mier bank at the end of this year.

Al­so, TATIL has en­tered in­to an agree­ment to ac­quire Colfire.

“We just re­cent­ly re­ceived ap­proval from the Cen­tral Bank to pro­ceed with this trans­ac­tion. This was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone we need­ed to achieve to progress. While there may be fur­ther steps to com­ple­tion we ex­pect to be closed by the end of the year if not ear­ly next year,” Bain-Cum­ber­batch added.

And on the ESG front she the group has ac­quired a so­lar farm in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. “That is cur­rent­ly at 33 megawatts and we ex­pect to go in­to a phase two of that very soon,” she not­ed.

Go­ing for­ward she said the group has an “ex­treme­ly ro­bust pipeline of ac­qui­si­tions” it is con­stant­ly look­ing at, not­ing it re­mains on a growth tra­jec­to­ry not on­ly re­gion­al­ly but al­so in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.